The year's Steam Replay reveals 85% of Steam users in 2024 spent time playing games released in 2023 or earlierBeen there, done stat.Image credit: Valve News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 22, 2024 Just 15 percent of Steam players spent time with new releases - defined as games released in 2024 - this year.That's according to Steam itself, which gave us a little insight into the broader playing habits of its players as part of Steam Replay 2024.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Is Sony buying FromSoftware's parent company the next big games industry acquisition?Watch on YouTubeThis year, the recap not only shows you how many games you played and when, but also your favourite genres, the achievements you unlocked (the median was 13), the number of games played (for most, this is four), and your longest streak (the average was six days, apparently)."How many games did you play, and how does that compare to last year? Did you unlock a bunch of achievements? What about your longest streak? These fun numbers and more are in your Replay," Valve teases.You also get the chance to be humbled by the amount of time you spent with your most-played games of 2024, as well as a quick recap of any playtests you participated in, too.Interested? Head on over to the official Steam page for more.A 2021 antitrust dispute brought against Steam has now been expanded into a class action lawsuit.Initially, the case concerned just two companies - Wolfire Studios and Dark Catt Studios - but a court document recently showed the motion for class certification has been approved. This means the lawsuit now applies to "any developers, publishers, or individuals" who have honoured Steam's 30 percent cut on any and all purchases on or after 28th January 2017.

PlayStation and Final Fantasy have been closely linked for nearly the entire history of Sonys console efforts. 1997's Final Fantasy 7 was a touchstone in storytelling and computer graphics on PS1, and nearly every single mainline Final Fantasy game since then has made its console debut exclusively on a PlayStation system. That close relationship extends to Sony's PS5 Pro, as this year's Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has been overhauled for the new enhanced system. Plus, Game Boost should provide a bonus to older Final Fantasy software, even games that havent been formally enhanced for PS5 Pro. So exactly how does Rebirth fare on PS5 Pro? And can the PS5 Pro overcome frame-rate limitations in Final Fantasy 14 and 16?Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is widely acclaimed, but is also well known for substantial image quality woes. The game suffered from softer-than-usual imagery on a 4K screen, especially in performance mode, making for a somewhat unsatisfying 60fps experience. That's not really a concern on PS5 Pro. In stills, the clarity difference is pretty enormous. We're going from an image that appears quite 1080p-like - despite technically usually running a somewhat higher res - to a crisp, sharp 4K resolve on Pro. On a 4K set sitting from a normal viewing distance, the old performance mode looked obviously soft and lacking detail, while PS5 Pro is razor sharp, at least by the standards of modern temporal AA techniques.A lot of this was obvious in the pre-launch preview we conducted a couple months ago - but it's especially clear in the final game. When you can actually sit down and examine shots closely, you get a great sense of the benefits of PS5 Pro in this title. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth presents large, sprawling environments, and the base console just didn't do a good job of resolving distant detail effectively.Join Oliver Mackenzie for a look at every Final Fantasy game on PlayStation 5, tested on the new, professional model.Watch on YouTubePixel counts show a mild Pro advantage, but that's not particularly relevant: the new console is using Sony's new PSSR upsampling technique to hit a full 4K resolution, while the base machine is using Unreal Engine's TAA with just a naive upscale to 4K. That means that the Pro is actually resolving 4K-like detail despite its typically sub-native pixel count. The game looks pretty solid in motion as well, clearly resolving extra detail. That said, it's not flawless, with some sub-pixel shimmer and moire patterns on some surfaces.Those issues also appear to some degree on the base machine, so the fact that PSSR isn't free of problems isn't really a strike against it comparatively - but there are some issues that seem to emerge just on PS5 Pro. The foliage, for instance, has some odd scanline-like patterns at a distance on Pro. At closer ranges, it can sometimes blur excessively, with a kind of accumulation smear trailing behind. Additionally, the image at rest can appear slightly unstable, with a kind of PSSR noise that we've come to expect in a lot of titles that use the technique.The biggest criticism is that Square-Enix hasn't touched graphical issues inherent to the game itself. The key issue comes down to draw distance, as pop-in for elements like bushes and ground clutter can be quite severe and it's a near-constant issue in most natural environments. That makes that Rebirth would look a bit unstable in these scenes even with perfect anti-aliasing treatment. PSSR actually makes the issue a bit more pronounced, because you have a clearer view of the bits of foliage and model detail that are updating to more detailed variants. The game's documented lighting and texture work issues are unchanged as well, as are all other major visual settings.Overall, it's definitely a big improvement over the performance mode, and produces a suitably detailed image for a 4K television set. The stability of the anti-aliasing treatment is also generally acceptable, if well short of the kind of pristine images we've seen out of the Horizon PS5 Pro patches, for instance. It also falls somewhat short of the old graphics mode. The higher internal resolution - which is usually at or around 4K - produces a pretty clean result with TAA. Graphics mode is generally free of visual gremlins like problems with foliage, or issues with shimmer or noise. In a few specific areas, the graphics mode produces a substantially better result. PS5 Perf Smooth PS5 Graphics Mode PS5 Pro 60fpsAn at-a-glance look at the quality improvement. These shots are taken from a preview build of the Pro version, but the final version is identical. PS5 Perf Smooth PS5 Graphics Mode PS5 Pro 60fpsThis shot is remarkable in that PS5 Pro here is delivering a crisper image than the standard PS5's 30fps quality mode. PS5 Perf Smooth PS5 Graphics Mode PS5 Pro 60fpsDetail on the fur here is higher on PS5 Pro at 60fps than either of the PS5 options. PS5 Perf Smooth PS5 Graphics Mode PS5 Pro 60fpsAnother hair quality comparison across both PS5 modes, up against the 60fps footage we have from PS5 Pro. PS5 Perf Smooth PS5 Graphics Mode PS5 Pro 60fpsMore patched imagery from the two graphics modes on standard PlayStation 5, compared against the broadcast quality PS5 Pro capture we have. PS5 Perf Smooth PS5 Graphics Mode PS5 Pro 60fpsMore patched imagery from the two graphics modes on standard PlayStation 5, compared against the broadcast quality PS5 Pro capture we have.But the PSSR-powered PS5 Pro does produce a clearer, sharper image, both at rest and in motion. The game's old TAA tended to blur the game a little bit excessively, even at 4K resolution, which isnt a problem with PSSR. There are definite tradeoffs then, although I'd give the nod to the graphics mode in aggregate. Everything I've said so far only applies to the PS5 Pro's versatility mode, which is the new mode option enabled on PS5 Pro. But the old modes are still available on Pro. A quick comparison suggests they are substantially similar to the same modes on base PS5, without large visual changes.I do think Square-Enix's naming conventions are a bit odd here and there's little suggestion in-game to indicate that the versatility mode is the preferred option for PS5 Pro. The in-game descriptions could certainly be better, or they could nudge the player towards the mode using a start-up prompt like Naughty Dog does for their Last of Us titles. Alternatively, cutting the other mode options out of the PS5 Pro code would also be reasonable, as the old modes are clearly worse in my opinion.That's because the versatility mode manages to pull off an essentially locked 60fps, in addition to its generally good image quality. I tested the game in a variety of stressful encounters and it rarely dropped a frame, outside of the occasional missed frame on camera cuts. I did manage to provoke a few brief dips in this boss fight, but elsewhere the game seemed like a locked 60fps. Of course, Rebirth is a huge game and I don't have time to test everything, but I do feel like performance is generally very strong. In essence then, the versatility mode addresses image quality concerns with better upscaling. It's the best way to play - until the PC version lands, at least.Final Fantasy 16 is next up, Square-Enix's 2023 action-RPG epic. Technically, this isn't actually a PS5 Pro enhanced game, but Game Boost produces some compelling results. A quick side-by-side reveals considerably more detail on PS5 Pro, in both the frame-rate and graphics modes. FF16's TSCMAA and FSR 1 combination actually leaves a lot of the underlying pixel structure of the image intact, so we can make out less aliasing on Pro. Certain fine details resolve more clearly in the final frame. Internal resolutions appear to be higher on Pro, unsurprisingly, though the difference tends to be larger in the graphics mode than in performance mode. FF16 would probably benefit from a technique like FSR 2 or PSSR, but the Pro at least gives us more samples effectively to work with to produce a less aliased image.Another classic series - Resident Evil - also benefits across a range of titles on PS5 Pro, thanks to both native upgrades and Game Boost enhancements.Watch on YouTubeIn performance terms, the Pro actually delivers a considerably better visual experience and I noted frame-rate uplifts in the region of 24 percent. Sometimes this just means a frame-rate that is a bit higher, typically at least sitting within the Pro's VRR window, but a lot of the time this means 60fps or close to it, while the base machine is struggling a little. The graphics mode remains at 30fps however, just like PS5. Overall it's a nice little upgrade, especially in frame-rate mode where the performance could flag a little bit before.Up next is Final Fantasy 14, which again runs boosted - but not formally enhanced - on PS5 Pro. Interestingly, running at native 4K there are some of the largest Pro boosts we've seen so far, running up to about 40 percent faster than the base console across these scenes. It's enough to bring the game to a reasonably consistent 60fps in a lot of game content at 60Hz output, which wasn't the case before. It takes relatively heavy loads - like the lower decks of Limsa Lominsa - before we start seeing consistently sub-60 readings at full 4K.At a lower 1440p resolution, the Pro notches pretty substantial wins here, clocking in about 32 percent faster when not vsync limited. The level of image fluidity we can get out of the Pro - while still at a perfectly reasonable 1440p res - is quite impressive, at least when VRR is enabled. It's certainly an enormous improvement from my first point of contact with this game, when I played it in 2013 on a launch-era PS3 console!Finally we have Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, which is technically a Final Fantasy game too. On PS5 in performance mode, it targets 60fps but has a habit of dropping frames fairly often, often dipping to the 50s and sometimes lower during combat encounters. The resolution mode is actually pretty similar, taking dips in the same instances, though the drops are larger. The performance mode comes in at roughly 1440p, and curiously the resolution mode clocked in at the same 1440p pixel count in my tests, though it's possible dynamic res may be in play. I think the checkerboard technique Team Ninja employed in the launch version of the game has been dropped here, but there still isn't effective TAA and the image looks pretty messy.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. On PS5 Pro, those performance drops are a lot less frequent and impact the game less substantially. Stranger of Paradise actually delivers a semi-credible 60fps update on Pro, which is a solid upgrade, considering how the base console struggled. Both modes feel fairly similar here in my experience. Again, there's no formal Pro enhancement to take advantage of, but the GPU enhancement is delivering some reasonably good results.There are two other PS5-native Final Fantasy games as well - Crisis Core Reunion and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. These games ran with pretty impeccable performance originally on PS5 with relatively high rendering resolutions, so there's no urgent need for a Pro boost. But they do employ dynamic resolution setups, so it's likely they run with somewhat less aggressive DRS on Pro.PS4 titles don't seem to get a dramatic frame-rate boost from PS5 Pro in particular, so the outcomes in games like Final Fantasy 15 and 12 seem similar to the base PS5 and as expected, the Pro doesn't do anything to fix the incorrect frame pacing in FF15 either.So, ultimately, the PS5 Pro's Final Fantasy improvements are mostly isolated to the four games I highlighted up-front. Rebirth obviously gets the best of the lot, with an excellent Pro patch offering a compelling 4K60 gameplay mode. FF16 gets a welcome mix of resolution bumps and frame-rate enhancements, FF14 runs quite a lot faster than the base machine, and Stranger of Paradise gives a more convincing 60fps lock. Looking forward, I'd love to see an actual FF16 patch if at all possible. Dropping TSCMAA in favour of FSR 2 or PSSR would be a win and there's probably a lot of headroom to push image quality on PS5 Pro. If Square-Enix revisits the game for release on other platforms, maybe they could take another look at the PS5 code. But even with just one proper Pro patch, I think the PS5 Pro presents compelling upgrades over the base platform for Final Fantasy titles. Its a surprisingly strong showing for Square-Enix's flagship fantasy franchise.

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl dev is working on a "next-gen patch" for Stalker: Legends of the Zone TrilogyPlus expect a Stalker 2 development roadmap next year, too.Image credit: Eurogamer/GSC Game World News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 22, 2024 As Stalker 2 developer GSC Game World marks the close of 2024 with patch 1.1, the studio confirmed it is also working on a next-gen patch for the console version of Stalker: Legends of the Zone Trilogy.Although only able to commit to a fairly broad "next year", the team said, "we know you've asked us to update the PC versions of the original Stalker games, and we also plan to do that"."Keep an eye on our social media so you don't miss the exact dates," the studio teased.S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Launch Trailer.Watch on YouTubeIn an end-of-year message, GSC said: "Yesterday, a major patch 1.1 for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl was released. All the time between the release and the Christmas holidays has been dedicated to improving your experience with our game. We hope that many of you will find the time to start, continue, or finish Stalker 2 during the holidays." To see this content please enable targeting cookies.GSC said that it will continue to update Stalker 2 in the upcoming year, and will "be ready to share the content roadmap for the game at the beginning of 2025"."The next-gen patch for the console versions of Stalker: Legends of the Zone Trilogy will be released next year," GSC added. "We know you've asked us to update the PC versions of the original Stalker games, and we also plan to do that."The amount of support you've shown us since the game's launch still amazes us. Your support is truly a miracle of the Zone. We will see you next year!"At its launch in November, Stalker 2 was criticised for its performance issues. However, in an interview with Eurogamer, GSC Game World's CEO Ievgen Grygorovych said delaying the game was not an option."You're so tired that you would just die if you say let's run an additional marathon," Grygorovych said at the time. "We didn't have a chance to say let's do it more. We just had a chance of 'let's do until this moment - the release date - as much as we can'."Earlier this week, GSC Game World released the first major patch for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, which addressed over 1800 issues.

What we've been playing - Open-world dress up, plant puzzles, and festive levelsA few of the things that have us hooked this week.Image credit: Team Asobi Feature by Tom Orry Editorial Director, Gamer Network Published on Dec. 21, 2024 21st DecemberHello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we love a nice festive level, tackle some plant-based puzzles, and explore a brilliant open world while wearing some tremendous outfits.Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.Astro Bot, PS5 Image credit: Team AsobiLook, I've got so many games on my list that I'm keen to play, but when Astro Bot got a free winter/holiday themed level I had to play that immediately. It's, as expected, rather lovely. I wrote a completely original song, not at all based on an existing Christmas classic, to celebrate its release.DualSense rings, are you listening,What a pain, Retro RampageA beautiful sight,Puzzle Piece tonight,Walking in an Astro wonderland.Gone away is the Deckster,Here to stay is my blisterDamn that time trial,Live in denial,Walking in an Astro wonderland.-Tom OBotany Manor, Xbox Series X Image credit: Balloon Studios/Whitethorn Games/EurogamerWelcome to the last weeks of December, aka: the weeks where we play 'Let's mop up all the millions of great games we missed from earlier in the year'. I'll be honest, readers, despite playing loads of games from January to March this year, and then another truckload in these latter months from September onwards, I've got a great big gaping hole of games I've missed from the spring and summer months - something I've been trying to rectify with some rapid-fire quickplays lately to see what grabs my attention and what doesn't.One game I wolfed down in a single evening recently was Botany Manor, a sedate puzzle game about growing all sorts of weird and wonderful plants inside a picturesque Somerset stately home. These aren't your typical roses and daffodils, though. Rather, these rare and exotic strains will only bloom under very specific circumstances - the right room temperature, say, or having its soil juiced up to a particular pH by crushing certain apple varieties into it. My favourite was the Wolfglove, which only bursts into life when you recreate specific sounds and wind speeds inside an old tower to mimic the environment of its mountainous home.It's very artfully done, and the puzzle of working out what conditions you need to induce require a fair bit of brain power to suss out, putting together clues and information from notes, letters and observations you'll find strewn about the desks, bins and tables of the manor. I was expecting it to be another one of these cosy game pushovers where all the thinking is done for you, but I was pleasantly surprised by the rigour of its cerebral challenges. Plus, it's just a wonderful space to noodle about in, its bright and vibrant colour palette and seemingly interrupted spate of picnics and discarded deckchairs bringing touches of The Witness to it. It's a very jolly time, if a little summery for such a wintry, end of year playthrough.-KatharineInfinity Nikki, PS5Despite playing a lot of open-world games (welcome to guides writing), there's not many that I genuinely enjoy exploring. I may get sucked into ticking-off side quests for a short while, but there's a reason the last Ubisoft game I completed was Assassin's Creed 2: open worlds just seem so big, and scary, and boring a lot of the time. But when a game understands what its audience wants, an open-world isn't a challenge anymore - it's an invitation.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Watch on YouTubeInfinity Nikki invites us to find hot air balloons, bubble blowers, magical hopscotch, and giant bird-like Sky Monarchs, which you can ride on the back of to take in the fairytale sights of Miraland. There are also adorable fairy-like Faewish Spirits to help, cute animals to pet, and thousands of pieces of clothes to customise your Nikki with, to fit whatever style you'd like to see her in while exploring.It's massive, yes, but Infinity Nikki's world seems like it's designed in service to how happy and joyous it can make you feel, not how much it can pack in to keep you distracted. It's not perfect - there are bugs at launch, and the standard open-world trappings like collectibles are still present, but for the most part, Infinity Nikki is about as upbeat and cheerful as it gets in video games. Not what I was expecting from a series with its roots in the mobile dress-up genre, that's for sure!-JessicaDon't get too festive in the comments just yet. We've got a Christmas special edition of What We've Been Playing going live on Christmas Day morning. See you then.Dragon Age: The Veilguard, PS5 Image credit: Eurogamer / EA BioWareI'll admit I've never been the biggest Dragon Age fan, though as a lover of fantasy RPGs and Mass Effect, on paper the series is right up my street. I've played Origins and Inquisition, but they always felt a step behind their big sci-fi brother and, beyond some fun characterful moments with companions, felt generic compared to others of the genre.Veilguard has changed my view a little. Its streamlined gameplay is more akin to Mass Effect but better and more focused for it, while the new visual style helps to give the game its own identity. With its rounded characters, flamboyant hair tech, and soft lighting, I feel like I'm playing a Pixar fantasy in a L'Oreal advert, with some truly spectacular environments too. It looks great!It's been years, though, since I played Inquisition and without deep lore knowledge the story of Veilguard felt nonsensical and its characters not as immediately likeable. And beyond its dated quest design, it was the repetitive combat that frustrated me above all. I played as a mage and spent most of my time dodging enemies rather than attacking: between constant aggro, enemy animations that seem perfectly timed to interrupt your spell-flinging, and a lock-on that constantly removes itself when interrupted by the environment, I was near catatonic with rage by the game's end.And yet (!), somehow I felt compelled to see it through. For the most part I found Dragon Age: The Veilguard to be mindless and monotonous, but I think that's actually what I needed right now. After a long year of plenty of lengthy, complex and challenging RPGs, I was keen to lounge on the sofa and sink into something a little more relaxing. The check-list missions, button-bashing combat, and follow the marker quests proved surprisingly engrossing. Right now, that's good enough.-Ed

The winter mechanical keyboard shootout: four tiny options put to the testIt's time for another roundup. Blog by Reece Bithrey Contributor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 Well, we're into the month of December, and temperatures are beginning to get close to freezing here in old England-land. What I've decided to do, in lieu of the cold weather, is take the time indoors to review some more keyboards, although this time with a focus on smaller choices that are rather interesting. Yes, I really am a nerd.Nonetheless, here are three options and a fun wildcard for you to consider, ranging from a seriously customisable 65 percent choice to a 'board with my favourite layout and some interesting changes and another 65 percent option which revives an important custom option from a decade ago.Drop CSTM65 review: An SFF option with a hot-swappable caseWhiteFox Eclipse review: Reviving one of the most important custom 'boards from a decade agoHHKB Studio review: The legendary Japanese keyboard returns, although with a different everythingWildcard: NCR-80 R2 review: A DIY keyboard kit with retro sensibilitiesDrop CSTM65 review: An SFF option with a hot-swappable case Buy: $99 at Drop (usually $129)First up is the Drop CSTM65, whose name explains pretty much exactly what this 'board is all about - a custom 65 percent choice. It offers the benefit of a smaller form factor layout for both providing more desk space and being on trend, while also coming with the fun of a hot-swappable plastic top case. That's right - the CSTM65's top housing can be replaced simply by taking the case off by lifting upwards to reveal the metal innards beneath. With my sample, Drop sent the keyboard in black, and provided the Overgrowth decorative case to go with it ($35) which can be swapped on in a matter of seconds. It completely changes the look of the keyboard, and is an ingenious and cost-effective way of giving your setup a new look without dropping a lot more on a new keyboard.You also get funky aesthetic choices elsewhere on this standard, fully-assembled model with side-printed ABS keycaps. From the top down, they are blank, meaning you've got to be a competent touch-typist at least, although they can at least be swapped out for other keycaps with more standard legend placement if you'd prefer. These are ABS keycaps, so come with a cheaper feel than the PBT I crave, but nonetheless are decent enough under finger.Connectivity here is purely wired via a USB-C to USB-A cable provided in the box, while inside the CSTM65 in pre-built form comes with either Gateron Yellow KS3 linear or Gateron Brown Pro 3.0 soft-tactile switches. My sample came with the latter. They're a reasonable clone of MX Browns, although the tactility isn't as crisp or present, and with the switches being lubricated, it has had the unfortunate side-effect of dampening the feeling a tad. With this in mind, they are comfortable switches to use for typing and the occasional piece of gaming, although if they aren't what you're after, you can soon change them to other switches with 3 or 5-pin mounting as the CSTM65 is hotswappable. The casing can be swapped out and changed with ease.Acoustics here are also solid with the lubed switches, polycarb case and innards, and the range of sound-dampening foam that lives inside the CSTM65. There isn't any case rattle or ping, and it sounds excellent. The RGB lighting on offer is bright, and with the side-printed keycaps, certainly adds to the overall aesthetic. It is addressable with the CSTM65 supporting both QMK firmware flashing and VIA, as Drop's own online configurator where you can flash firmware choices directly to the keyboard. It is a little fiddly, but makes for powerful customisation. The side-mounted legends are interesting, although a little difficult to read.In its prebuilt form, the Drop CSTM65 is going to run you $129, which for a mechanical choice with this much customisation, is rather decent value for money. Not many keyboards offer as much modularity as the CSTM65 without you paying a fair bit more, and if that's what you're after, this is an excellent keyboard.WhiteFox Eclipse review: Reviving one of the most important custom 'boards from a decade ago Buy: The WhiteFox Eclipse may not be the first keyboard that comes to mind when it comes to talking about some of the most important keyboards of all time. That discussion is usually reserved for the IBM Model F or M (and usually brought up with its mention of well-made clones). However, I'd argue, as Alpaca Keyboards (the folks behind the Whitefox Eclipse) would, that Matt3o's Brown Fox is one of the most.Allow me to explain - the WhiteFox Eclipse is a modern reproduction of one of the first custom keyboards developed from the ground up from a member of the mechanical keyboard hobbyist community - namely Matt3o on Deskthority. You might have heard of Matt3o before - he used to collaborate with Drop/Massdrop on a range of keycaps, with some of his designs still stocked. Back in 2013, he set out to build a custom keyboard from the ground up, opting to go for an laser cut acrylic case; hand-soldered, plate mounted MX switches (MX Blues for the main keys, MX Red for arrow keys and MX Green for the space bar) aluminium plate and some lovely brown keycaps, christening it the Brown Fox. Matt3o's original Brown Fox - the original behind this new keyboard.From there, the keyboard was launched in collaboration with Massdrop and Input Club in 2015 with some tweaks, known as the White Fox, which became the most-backed keyboard on Massdrop at the time, and popularised a form of the 65 percent layout that has since become a favourite for enthusiasts. The interesting part comes a couple of years later when Alpaca, the makers of the new Whitefox Eclipse, was established by former members of Massdrop's mechanical keyboards team, who then set out to make a new version of the Whitefox keyboard. After a few years of development, the WhiteFox Eclipse was brought to market.The similarities between the old WhiteFox from Massdrop and the new Eclipse model here are mostly cosmetic, with the same clean white finish, a similar 'TrueFox' 68 percent layout with a nav cluster and arrow keys on the right hand side, and the same Cherry profile dye-sub PBT keycaps. It results in a keyboard that looks gorgeous and wonderfully modern. The 'TrueFox' layout is unique here, offering a clever blend of 65 and 75 percent 'boards.My sample is the plastic case version, although you can also get it with an aluminium case, much like the Massdrop version. It's reasonably sturdy, although comes with some flex under pressure. By default, the WhiteFox Eclipse is a tall and flat keyboard with the case being quite thick and with it coming with full-size switches. This means it can be quite difficult to use without it being raised up to a more comfortable angle. To this end, I'm especially grateful for the magnetic feet that are provided in the box.On the older Massdrop version, you got a serious amount of choice with the switches inside the WhiteFox. In total, there were 11 to pick from with a range which were the most popular among users of Massdrop at the time. You had a choice of more standard options such as Cherry MX Red, Blue, and Brown, alongside their Gateron clone counterparts, as well as odder options from the MX lineup that are rare even now - MX Green, Clear and White. You also got Gateron Green and Clear options, as well as Zealios switches, which were Gateron soft tactile switches that offered a similar force to MX Clears, a higher actuation point, and a supposedly even smoother actuation. Gateron Yellows are the switch of choice here.With the Eclipse version here, things are a lot simpler. This keyboard comes with pre-lubed Gateron Yellows inside, which are a 50g linear switch that feel especially smooth under finger. Unlike other Gateron choices in the past, these have a consistent, responsive keypress which felt excellent to use when typing up plenty of words in articles and such. Their lubrication also allowed for fantastic acoustics alongside the presence of a lot of poron foam inside the case for dampening. If these switches aren't to your liking though, the WhiteFox Eclipse is hot-swappable. That's one benefit of this newer version against the Massdrop option.This keyboard is also gasket-mounted, which has become a standard feature on a lot of prebuilt mechanical choices these days, lending the typing feel to have a slightly bouncier and perceivably more responsive feel against other options. It works in the Eclipse's favour, offering a comfortable experience, all things considered. Even the underside is especially clean.Connectivity is handled by Bluetooth connectivity on up to 3 devices, with pairing on each channel handled by holding down the Fn and Q, W or E keys respectively. The WhiteFox Eclipse also plays nicely on both Windows and macOS and worked without an issue on both OSes in my testing. For macOS use, there are also Mac-specific keycaps included in the box, alongside blue-coloured and Fox accent keys to stay true to the original, a keycap and switch puller, a double-ended spudger for accessing the keyboard's innards and a fantastic quality braided USB-C to USB-A charging cable.Alpaca rates the WhiteFox Eclipse's 4000mAh battery to last for around 90 hours on a charge. This is pretty solid overall, and means you'll be able to go for a good couple of weeks before needing to charge it back up again. That 90 hour runtime is also with the RGB lighting on, which is great. Turn it off, and this extends all way to 10 days. The RGB lighting is simple, but effective.There isn't any additional software here, with customisation limited to changing the RGB lighting mode through a series of keyboard shortcuts. There are a range to choose from, with most of them displaying colours of the rainbow in a slightly different patterns, although some only do this in red and white, or a different shade of blue. You can use Fn and M to change the pattern, and Fn and K to cycle through different colours for the pattern. There is single colour backlighting contained within these settings, although isn't as easy to access as with actual software.The WhiteFox Alpaca is an interesting successor to the original choice, adding some modern functional touches to one of the most important custom keyboards of the last decade. The market may have shifted a fair bit since the original version's release, but there's no doubt that this reimagined version still holds up in 2024.HHKB Studio review: The legendary Japanese keyboard returns, although with a different everything Buy: I've been using an HHKB Professional Hybrid Type-S, which is one of our favourite small form factor keyboards, on and off for the last 18 months. On its own, the HHKB is an expensive Japanese cult sensation known for its electro-capacitive switches which are unlike anything else, and its odd layout. The HHKB Studio is the PFU Corporation's attempt to offer a first-party HHKB for the more normal mechanical keyboard enthuisast - allow me to explain.There are two big differences with this new Studio model against the normal models, the first of which is its choice of switches. As opposed to opting for the classic Topre electro-capacitive options inside, the Studio uses silent linear switches from Kalih with a 45g actuation force. They were surprisingly smooth to type on and felt responsive for day-to-day working, although I still prefer electro-capacitives in my normal HHKB. They just have a crisper keypress because of their unique tactility that you miss out on with linears such as in the HHKB Studio, but the Kalih switches inside felt excellent for office work while also being super quiet.The other big difference against the normal HHKB is the addition of a trackpoint slap bang in the middle of the alphanumeric keys. The trackpoint is recognisable for being in the sea of IBM and Lenovo ThinkPads across from the 1990s to today, as well as other laptops from that era. It was a patented tech by Lenovo in 1997, although with its expiry, it has made its way into other products, such as the HHKB Studio. In essence, it is a pointing stick that offers a way of moving your mouse cursor without the need for a mouse. Yep, that's a trackpoint.It takes some getting used to, and you do have to be precise with it, but the trackpoint is a reasonably useful addition to the HHKB Studio's arsenal. There are also gesture pads around the bottom of the Studio for making tasks such as scrolling easier, as well as dedicated mouse buttons below the space bar for left, middle and right click. That's an interesting addition, and one I did find myself using a fair bit - more than I thought I would, admittedly.Along with the trackpoint, the HHKB Studio also bundles in some interesting gesture pads, which allow you to use the sides of the board's chassis for commands such as increasing and decreasing volume, or scrolling through a web page. It's an interesting addition here, although not one I found myself using too much due to its unfamiliarity compared to a traditional rotary dial.It's worth discussing the HHKB layout just before I move on, as it looks a bit weird. It's all thanks to a collaboration between Japanese computer scientist Eiiti Wada and the PFU Corporation, the Japanese firm that makes the HHKB. Wada wanted a layout that would work with the range of different operating systems and computers he used in the mid 1990s. What resulted is a very comfortable layout with some small, but worthwhile modifications, such as moving the Ctrl key to where Caps Lock would normally be to reduce the distance your fingers need to travel for performing common functions such as Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, removing the key between Backspace and Enter to make it easier to hit both of them, and moving the Function key to a row above its placement on a traditional keyboard. It's a unique layout, but one that's especially comfortable to use.The HHKB Studio also works without a hitch on Windows and macOS, although comes with macOS keycaps by default - as an aside, the dye-sub PBT keycaps here are some of the best I've used. There is multi-point Bluetooth with it being able to connect to up to four devices at once, with pairing a breeze thanks to a key combo. There isn't any USB receiver action here though, although having Bluetooth is arguably easier. I certainly had no trouble.Software comes in the form of the HHKB Studio Keymap too, which allows you to remap keys, as well as add functions to dedicated keys, such as enabling the gesture pads' functionality with a modifier key. In addition, there are also several function layers to program keys on to provide a fair amount of flexibility. It may not be as powerful as VIA, but the software is quite useful. The only issue is that it has to be used when the HHKB Studio is plugged in, which has you reaching for the cable if you want to remap any keys.Then there's the price - you might want to make sure you're sitting up for this. The HHKB Studio is yours for 325/$329, which is hilariously expensive for a niche keyboard. It's only something I'd recommend if it's what you're really after. Personally, I like the HHKB Studio, but then I am kind of the target market. For everyone else, if you want the HHKB experience in layout only with more customisation choices, this is great, but for everyone else, get a more 'standard' HHKB. You'll thank me later.Wildcard: NCR-80 R2 review: A DIY keyboard kit with retro sensibilities Buy: I usually include a wildcard, or odder, choice in these roundups if you want to consider something that's even more niche than the three choices above for small form factor keyboards. Allow me to introduce you to the NCR-80 R2.On its own, it's a TKL mechanical keyboard kit that you can purchase in barebones form with a PCB, stabilisers and case. There aren't any switches or keycaps included, so you will need to purchase these separately.In a world where mechanical keyboard design has become increasingly zany, bright and perhaps a bit wacky in some cases, the NCR-80 might seem a little boring. There is a good reason for this, though. This beige plastic case is designed to mimic the older Cherry G80 and G81-3000 models from the 1990s, and does so admirably. Having used my fair share of G80-3000s old and new (my very first mechanical 'board was one with MX Blues), I can safely say that the NCR-80 nails it, and arguably improves on those late-era versions with an injection moulded plastic frame that suffers from no flex whatsoever. It also leans into the G80-3000's look with bright green functioning lock lights in the top right corner, a lovely NCR logo in the opposing corner, and a totally-not Cherry label on the reverse. How good does this look? Seriously.Of course, as a more modern take, you get benefits such as a USB-C port for wired connectivity, while there is full QMK and VIA support for controlling key functionality and programming on different layers. The PCB inside is also hot-swappable, and you can have whichever switches you want in here, as long as they're 3 or 5 pin. You will have to supply your own though, as this is just the chassis, PCB and stabilisers.The very kind folks at MechBoards UK sent this over, and specced it out with some TTC Golden Blues. I felt like it had to be something clicky because it leans into the romanticised era of loud keyboards that the G80-3000 was born into back in 1988. These are 37g tactile switches with a total travel of 3.5mm, making them lighter and snappier than your standard MX Blues. I found them quite comfortable to use for writing up all sorts of content, and being a lighter switch, you could conceivably use them for gaming, if you're a madman. Nonetheless, the Golden Blues in here fitted well with the feel of the NCR-80, as do the lovely beige keycaps provided, which round off the look wonderfully. TTC Golden Blues for lots of clicky goodness.I may swap the switches out down the line for a spare bag of MX Black Clear Tops that I've got in storage somewhere. Those are part of the recent series of 'official' MX reissues that included proper versions of the MX Ergo Clear community mod, and the revival of the MX Orange. Clear Top Blacks, or Nixies as they're affectionately known, were initially made for a run of keyboards produced by Nixdorf in the 1980s, so I feel they'd fit well in here, but that's for another day.The thing with the NCR-80 is is that it isn't one of these kits that cost an arm and a leg. At 120/$90 online, it's one of the more 'affordable' ones I've come across, and one that blends wonderful retro charm with livable features and fantastic customisation in a lovely overall package. If you can get one, it's definitely worth it.So, there you have it. Four reviews of some small form factor keyboards I've indulged in testing over the last few months. If you've got any recommendations for other products for Will or I to test, feel free to drop them in the comments below or pester me on Twitter @RBithrey or on Bluesky @rbithrey.bsky.social.

Palestinian pseudo-3D stealth game Dreams on a Pillow looks set to hit 150K crowdfund target early"A land full of people being made into a people without land."Image credit: Rasheed Abueideh News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 A video game charting the true story of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs in 1948, has secured three-quarters of its crowdfunding goal with over three weeks still to go.Dreams on a Pillow - a "pseudo-3D stealth adventure game about a land full of people being made into a people without land" - tracks Omm, a young mother from an olive farmers' family in al-Tantura. With Omm, you'll traverse historical events and stories of the Nakba as she attempts an escape towards Lebanon in the North.Dreams on a Pillow - Campaign Trailer.Watch on YouTubeThe crowdfunding page explains that Palestinian game developer Rasheed Abueideh is "asking for your support and blessing as he sets out on his largest game project so far, which has been a dream of his for almost a decade". To date, it has realised 104.5K of the 155,823 Abueideh seeks to raise and is set to close on 13th January."Almost exactly a decade ago, as an Israeli invasion tore through Gaza, Rasheed Abueideh recognised the power of games: they let players step into someone elses reality," the description explains."Not long after Rasheed began development of Liyla & The Shadows of War, a game that brought to life the harsh realities of living under invasion, apartheid, & occupation. The development was fraught with obstacles and rejections: Apple declared the game 'too political', and temporarily banned the game - and while publishing funding in the games industry were aggressively funding games, a Palestinian game was deemed 'too controversial'. Rasheed persevered, and Liyla became a global phenomenon."Abueideh said Dreams on a Pillow is "proof that games can tell the stories of anyone, anywhere". For more, head on over to the crowdfunding page, where pledges range from 24 to 8000.

Once Human's mobile pre-registrations top 26m as April release window now confirmedOr are we dancer?Image credit: NetEase News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 NetEase's PvPvE sandbox action horror, Once Human, started testing its mobile port back in September, and now we finally have a mobile release window: April 2025.In an end-of-year livestream, NetEase also revealed what new features Meta-Humans can expect when the mobile version drops, including three new scenarios: Code: Purification, Code: Deviation, and Code: Broken. The latter is a 10-day PvP scenario, whilst the first two are PvE.Once Human - Official PVE Gameplay Trailer.Watch on YouTubeWe'll also get to experience the all-new Visional Wheel from 16th January, which introduces new wrinkles to gameplay courtesy of new weapons, powers, and rules, as well as making enemies stronger and adversely impacting player sanity. Oh, and there'll be a holiday event running across Christmas and the new year, too.Once Human is also expected to come to console - complete with cross-platform support - as well. There's still no date on that, though. Sorry.Interested? Head on over to the official website to pre-register your interest now. Right now, over 26 million Meta-Humans have signed up, unlocking a slew of free gifts including cosmetics, skins, decorative items, and crafting resources.I gave Once Human a modest three out of five stars when I reviewed it for Eurogamer, saying it offers a deeply moreish open world scavenge-em-up, but weak action and generic clutter hold it back. Since launch, however, NetEase has ramped up its premium in-game offerings, including cosmetic loot crates."Not for one moment did I expect a F2P live service offering to be anything other than an unmitigated slog stuffed with the pitfalls and unforced errors of every other game I started and stopped playing, so wildly over-saturated is this genre. But here I am, late at night again, fashioning myself a Slippery When Wet sign to put beside my water tank."The developer behind NetEase's survival free-to-play horror, Once Human, recently said the feedback it's received about the game's second season has been "quite demoralising".

Space Marine 2 on PS5 Pro: a much-needed image quality and performance upgradePlus: the base PS5 game patched with improved frame-rates.Image credit: Focus Entertainment Face-off by Thomas Morgan Senior Staff Writer, Digital Foundry Published on Dec. 20, 2024 PlayStation 5 Pro support at last arrives for Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2, resulting in one of the more worthwhile upgrades we've seen on Sony's mid-gen console to date. As of patch 1.5, PS5 Pro boosts performance in its 60fps speed mode and addresses the (at times) blurry image quality in that very same mode. Speed and quality modes both use PSSR in place of the original FSR2 method to improve image quality, while also pushing the internal resolution on each mode higher and targeting a 4K output resolution. In brief: on quality mode we now get a 1080p to 4K range as the input resolution, while on speed mode that range adjusts to 1080p-1440p.The big question then is whether the transition to PSSR is enough to make a perceptible difference to clarity on each mode. Especially in motion, what's the advantage versus the base PS5? And looking at the 60fps speed mode in particular, does the PS5 Pro finally deliver the smooth experience that was off the table for the base PS5? Before we kick off, a quick word on the state of the game on base PS5 today. The fact of the matter is that the 30fps quality mode always ran pretty well on base hardware, but the speed mode struggled with a wavering 35-60fps frame-rate readout. Comparing patch 1.2 - the version we tested in the original review three months ago - to today's patch 1.5, there's a respectable difference. The good news is we're seeing a 5-10fps improvement on base PS5, and occasionally even higher. Due to the variable nature of combat it's a real challenge to sync up gameplay on each, but the comparison still paints a clear picture overall: Saber Interactive has worked hard since launch to squeeze PS5 for better performance. Here's the full video comparison of Space Marine 2 on base PS5 and PS5 Pro - and some context from Xbox Series X. Watch on YouTubeThe net result is, those with a VRR-supporting display will benefit from the new patch, though the frame-rate can still slip below the 48fps cut-off for VRR on PS5 at times. Also, there's no real improvement in the game's self-evidently CPU-bottlenecked areas. The battle with the ripper swam at the end of mission two, for example, still hovers at around the 40fps mark, and even dips into the 30s at times. Finally, despite the general uptick in performance elsewhere, base PS5 does not match up to Xbox Series X's performance level in the speed mode, which we re-tested in patch 1.5 as well. The opening cutscene has PS5 fall short by up to 10fps, though in gameplay itself that margin narrows considerably. Series X is still the console to beat when it comes to hitting 60fps. Starting our PS5 Pro testing then, the 60fps speed is the obvious starting point with plenty to gain from the new hardware and PSSR. Space Marine 2's use of PSSR is a success on a similar level to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, allowing this 60fps mode to look much cleaner and clearer. In terms of raw resolution metrics, it's boosted from 720p to 1080p with FSR2 on base PS5 to 1080p-1440p reconstructed to 4K with PSSR. Despite the core visual settings remaining unchanged, the higher resolution and machine learning upscaling produce a huge improvement to the image in motion. Even in static shots, where an accumulation of frames helps both sides to resolve a 4K image, PS5 Pro ends up with a crisper picture. The base PS5 holds up reasonably well while held still, but PS5 Pro still manages to resolve distant plant detail more accurately. The greater Pro advantage though is in actual motion: PSSR's handling of dense jungle areas in mission one is truly standout, replacing the often mushy, blurred resolve of FSR2 with a crisper outline to each bit of scenery. PS5 Pro's ability to both generate more pixels - 1080p minimum, compared to a nadir of 720p on on base console - and to upscale it more intelligently allows for a huge improvement. From the grass, mud and mulch on the floor to the detailing on reflections and the metallic grates of a battle barge, all elements benefit from the move to PSSR. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. It's not perfect however. The downside is that the image is over-sharpened in spots, notably the foliage, and also the reflected elements in puddles. Elements with lots of sub-pixel movement, like swaying grass blades, at times still produce noise - aliasing. In a similar vein, you'll still spot flicker on hard, high-contrast surfaces too. There is a trade-off, but overall, it's still a net positive for PS5 Pro in this mode.Looking at the speed mode's actual performance next, PS5 Pro nudges the reading even closer to the target 60fps. This isn't an absolute lock at that top number by any means, especially once engaged in battle with multiple tyranids, but it is a boost in most respects over the base PS5 reading. In comparing the two machines, both updated to patch 1.5, we're looking at up to a 5fps gain during the opening cutscene as we land on the battlefield. From here onwards, the delta widens further to show a 10fps advantage on PS5 Pro in battle. At times it's even higher, though gameplay becomes increasingly tricky to sync up exactly. Alas, it's also hard to ignore the lingering drops on Pro: we're still seeing lurches to 45fps, just as enemies emerge from their pods on the opening jungle planet. Also, while improved, we're still generally operating in the 50-60fps range during set-pieces involving swarms of enemies. In short, all of this puts PS5 Pro more often at 60fps than base PS5, and ensures that the frame-rate remains within the 48-60 VRR window more often - but it's not a lock. There's one further caveat to speak on. It's an exceptional moment, but the handling of the infamous ripper swarm set piece in mission two still struggles on PS5 Pro. Unfortunately, Space Marine 2 puts demands on PS5 Pro here that are not solved by a 45 percent boost in GPU power, nor the offering of PSSR as an upscaler. In facing a huge swarm of enemies - similar to the rats in A Plague Tale: Requiem - PS5 Pro only ekes out a small performance gain over base PS5. The frame-rate oscillates between 40-60fps, which is an improvement on the dips below 40 we had before, but it's not enough. This is far from an optimal 60fps experience, and perhaps highlights the limits of the similar CPU profiles of each console. A frame-rate comparison to Series X also shows mixed fortunes. With each console updated to patch 1.5, Series X still has a 5fps advantage over PS5 Pro during the opening cutscene, though the result tends to favour PS5 Pro as we make the same run into the battlefield. Overall, the speed mode clearly benefits from Sony's new hardware: it's smoother in its overall frame-rate, and with a sharper image to boot, but it does have a few rough spots still to address. In the game's 60fps speed mode, Xbox Series X retains a performance advantage over PS5 and even PS5 Pro during cutscenes, while the PS5 Pro muscles ahead in gameplay.Switching over to the 30fps quality mode, the image quality gains are less profound on PS5 Pro, but still evident in side-by-side shots. Frankly, the FSR2 upscale on base PS5 already produces a crisp, clear image here, in rendering a dynamic 1080p to 1440p range that provides plenty of pixel data to work with. By contrast, PS5 Pro's push to a dynamic 1080p to 4K range with PSSR is a great but less essential upgrade. Looking at the quality mode's frame-rate, it's business as usual on Pro hardware. We get a locked 30fps read-out regardless of the situation, just as with base PS5. Impressively this includes the taxing ripper swarm segment, which has enough of a performance overhead - at 40fps lowest in the speed mode - to hold steady with a 30fps cap in place. Overall, the offering of a 30fps quality option makes sense on PS5 Pro, for two reasons. Firstly it gives us a water tight 30fps lock, just as with the base PS5 console, meaning those not happy with the frame-rate drops in the speed mode have a backup option. And secondly, by having a 33.3ms render budget per frame, quality mode has the scope to push a higher resolution frame on average, within its higher dynamic resolution range. The result is greater temporal stability: less shimmer on grassy elements and less flicker on metallic meshes of the battle barge than the speed mode.All round, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 looks and runs better on PS5 Pro, with developer Saber Interactive's use of PSSR paying off in a more handsome-looking game. In practise it's the image quality upgrade in the 60fps speed mode that stands out most with a cleaner resolve and higher frame-rates, even if a locked 60fps is still off the table. The advantage will be most keenly felt among VRR display owners who now have more frames to work with on average, though the drops to 40fps are still an issue. In theory, a 40fps capped option would have been perfect for Pro owners running on 120Hz displays in this case, given that the game capably runs above that line. Instead, what we have on patch 1.5 is still a solid upgrade on 60Hz displays, and even for base PS5 owners, it's good to see Saber continuing to optimise performance over the launch build.

A free trial of Diablo 4 is now available, as Blizzard competes with the early access release of Path of Exile 2.The free trial is available across Xbox, PlayStation, and Battle net until 3rd January, and includes the new Spiritborn class from the Vessel of Hatred expansion.What's more, the game is available with a 40 percent discount on Xbox and PlayStation, and 35 percent discount on Battle net and Steam, should you wish to turn the free trial into a full purchase.Diablo IV | Vessel of Hatred | Official Release Date TrailerWatch on YouTubeVessel of Hatred was released in October, adding the Spiritborn class and a new jungle region."A polished, bewitching upgrade that sinks its claws into you - featuring perhaps the best character class in Diablo's history," reads our Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred review. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.However, Diablo now has strong competition from Path of Exile 2, another ARPG that released into early access this month.Ahead of its launch it reached one million early access redemptions, and on Steam it quickly reached a peak concurrent player count of 578,569."Soulslike thrills combine with sky-high production values to make Path of Exile 2 a hugely impressive package, even in early access," reads our Path of Exile 2 early access review.Still, its developer admitted the game was "not rewarding enough" as it addressed early feedback and laid out plans to alter its rewards.Diablo 4 is also available on Xbox Game Pass.

XDefiant's final content patch is now available.Executive producer Mark Rubin said the update marked a "bittersweet moment", but he was proud of the team "that did everything they could to make this game and all of its amazing content"."Ubisoft has not only allowed a small team to stay on and continue working to get our Season 3 content out the door, but we've also been able to add some extra content to this release from future seasons," Rubin explained. "So, we have our Season 3 content plus some of the content from Season 4, 5, 6, 7 and even Season 8."13 Ways XDefiant Gameplay Aims To XDefeat Call Of Duty - XDEFIANT BETA PREVIEW & BEGINNERS TIPS.Watch on YouTubeThe content itself includes three new factions, including the Assassin Creed's crossover promised a little while back. The Wolves and Omega Force factions are also available, even though they were supposed to release in seasons four and five, respectively."We are also adding six new Arena Maps and three new Linear Maps from future seasons. So along with the four new maps from Season three thats a total of 13 new maps," Rubin added. "And I have to say the team really went all out on these amazing new maps. If you do anything at all, you need to check out the new Rayman map that was going to be part of an epic event takeover in Season 4. It even has its own mode with Lum Hunt." To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Players can also expect a brand-new experience called Tactical that uses corridor-style maps with new mode Defuse, a "1-life classic bomb mode", plus a slew of weapons and cosmetics that were supposed to come in future seasons, too."All of this and more are our last tribute to all of the hard-working people that made this game and to all of the fans who have been with us through this journey," Rubin added. "Not all journeys end well but we can all be proud of what we accomplished."I wish everyone who worked on this game directly or indirectly the best for their future endeavors. And the same goes for all of the fans who played our game, who streamed it, or who worked to build the XDefiant community."A month and a half after denying reports it was poised to pull the plug on its free-to-play live-service shooter XDefiant which launched back in May, Ubisoft confirmed earlier this month that it's doing just that, resulting in the closure of three production studios and 277 employees losing their jobs.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 has quietly replaced some of its Zombies cast - here's why"I sincerely hope to collaborate in the future once performers are protected against AI abuse."Image credit: Activision / Eurogamer News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 publisher Activision has replaced some of the shooter's voice actors amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA actor strike.The voices of Zombie mode characters William Peck and Samantha Maxis - hitherto portrayed by Zeke Alton and Julie Nathanson, respectively - seem to have changed between pre-release and now, with no formal word from the publisher or developer Treyarch about the change.It also appears that Alton has been pulled from the credits, too, whilst Nathanson remains on the list - albeit uncredited for individual roles - making it difficult to know what characters are now voiced by who.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Opening Scene and Gameplay (4K)Watch on YouTubeAlton expanded a little on the changes, saying "to the best of [their] knowledge, that performance is not [mine]"."It's [Activision's] character, and they can do with it what they please," Alton told Game Developer. "My only concern is for my brand as a performer. Fans of the game have reached out to me because the lack of crediting [of the replacement actor] implies that it may still be me, which unfairly represents my abilities as a performer."I have no issue with Activision's actions with a character and IP that they own," Alton added. "I absolutely adore the creative team and the opportunity I've had to collaborate with them in the past. I sincerely hope to collaborate in the future once all performers are protected against generative AI abuse."In a careful statement to press, Activision said it would not comment on the specifics "out of respect for all parties", adding it "respect[ed] the personal choice of these performers [to strike]" but wouldn't "add new commentary about the ongoing negotiations" with SAG-AFTRA. It then simply said it was "looking forward to a mutually beneficial outcome as soon as possible".Video game performers with US actors' union SAG-AFTRA are currently striking over concerns about the use of AI and a lack of protection for actors.In related news, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players recently hit out at "AI slop" they believe has been used within the game and its promotional materials.Last weekend, players noticed a six-fingered zombified Father Christmas had popped up on the loading screen, and whilst some fans simply attributed this as a nod to the fact this is the sixth Black Ops game, others alleged it was evidence that the art was machine-generated, as AI typically struggles to generate realistic-looking hands.

A Skibidi Toilet bundle is now available in Fortnite, if you're keen to flush away your V-Bucks. Read more

Frostpunk dev 11 Bit cancels project as it was conceived when "story-rich games held stronger appeal"The cancellation has resulted in an unknown number of job losses.Image credit: 11 Bit Studios / Eurogamer News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 Frostpunk developer 11 Bit Studios has laid off an unknown number of staff following the cancellation of its console game codenamed Project 8.Project 8 kicked off in 2018 and at least 37 people were working on it by the end of September 2024. The studio has invested "more than" 48.4m PLN in the game over that time, the equivalent of around 9.4m or $11.8m.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Is Sony buying FromSoftware's parent company the next big games industry acquisition?Watch on YouTubeHowever, the studio said in a statement that although it achieved "noticeable quality improvements in certain areas", "several critical aspects of the game and its development process remained problematic despite multiple iterations". This caused delays, and "with each milestone", the project's budget grew.The decision to shut it down finally came after 11 Bit reviewed Project 8's progress and found "unresolved issues and challenges that would require further extensions of the production timeline and corresponding budget increases to address. This, coupled with revised sales forecasts, largely reflecting the changing market environment, raised significant doubts about the projects overall profitability".This meant management lost confidence in the project and its "quality level", resulting in the termination."Our vision for Project 8, which was intended to be our first title designed specifically for console gamers, was bold and exciting," said Przemysław Marszał, president of the management board of 11 Bit studios. "However, it was conceived under very different market conditions, when narrative-driven, story-rich games held stronger appeal."With Project 8, we experienced both breakthroughs and setbacks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, stabilising the development team proved particularly difficult, yet progress continued. While we achieved noticeable quality improvements in certain areas, several critical aspects of the game and its development process remained problematic despite multiple iterations. Over time, delays accumulated, and with each milestone, the project's budget grew."Although "more than half" of the current Project 8 team have been reassigned to other internal projects, Project 8's closure would result in a "reduction of staff involved in its development" with those impacted receiving unspecified severance packages and "psychological counselling and assistance in finding new employment".The studio said it was still commitment to "several key projects", including Frostpunk 2 and The Alters.The number of game developers impacted by job losses in 2024 alone now stands at around 14,600 people.

Tencent pulls directors from Epic's executive board following antitrust "scrutiny" from US Justice DeptUS agency "expressed concerns" about potential antitrust conflicts.Image credit: Epic Games News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 Tencent has pulled two directors from Epic Games' board following an antitrust investigation by the US Justice Department.The government agency "expressed concerns" that Tencent had directors sitting on Epic's board when it's also the parent company of competitor Riot.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Is Sony buying FromSoftware's parent company the next big games industry acquisition?Watch on YouTubeIn a statement, the department said that by being simultaneously on two competing companies' executive boards, Tencent was violating Section 8 of the Clayton Act, a US law designed to protect consumers from potentially harmful business practices."Scrutiny around interlocking directorates continues to be an enforcement priority for the Antitrust Division," said the department's deputy director of civil enforcement, Miriam R. Vishio."Due to the hard work of our tremendous staff, our increased enforcement around Section 8 over the last few years has achieved substantial results and become part of our fabric."We recently learned that Ubisoft was continuing its talks with Chinese giant Tencent over a possible buyout deal that would take the Assassin's Creed maker private.

Hi-Fi Rush sequel being considered "positively" but Tango Gameworks considering "various opportunities""I want to cherish this IP."Image credit: Bethesda Softworks News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 A sequel to Hi-Fi Rush is being considered "positively" but studio Tango Gameworks is "considering various opportunities" before fully committing.In a new interview with IGN, studio head Colin Mack, Hi-Fi Rush director John Johanas, and Hi-Fi Rush project manager Kazuaki Egashira discussed the future of the franchise.After Microsoft closed Tango Gameworks it was acquired by Krafton. At the time of the acquisition a sequel to rhythm action game Hi-Fi Rush had begun, but Mack has now clarified the studio is considering its options.Hi-Fi Rush | Official Gameplay Deep Dive TrailerWatch on YouTube"We are considering a sequel positively," said Mack. "We are not yet at the stage where we can say specifically, 'This is what we're going to do'.""Many of our staff have a lot of love for [Hi-Fi Rush], so we feel like we have options," added Johanas. "We're currently at the stage of considering various opportunities."Johanas stated many members of the development team have a "strong attachment" to Hi-Fi Rush, adding: "Not only the game but also the characters and the world are beloved by us, so I want to cherish this IP."However he believes it's "important to try new things", which is seemingly a philosophy that itself led to the development of Hi-Fi Rush - a clear change in tone for the studio following The Evil Within.Indeed, Egashira said creating new experiences is "in the DNA of Tango Gameworks"."Hi-Fi Rush became popular as a new IP, but if Hi-Fi Rush were to stay the same forever, it would eventually become outdated," he said. "I think Tango Gameworks is about taking on new challenges. I hope to continue to work in a way that puts developers at the centre, without losing our passion."As previously reported, Krafton head of corporate development Maria Park stated a build for a Hi-Fi Rush sequel was about six months old ahead of the studio acquisition."[Tango] want to make sure [it] surpasses the expectations of the existing fans," said Park. "For instance, some of the feedback about Hi-Fi Rush was that some people felt it was [just] going through factories, so now they want to give a more open world type of experience. I don't think it's going to be completely open world, but a more dynamic environment [that] you play in. Also, having more advanced technology applied to the rhythm action so that it feels more synchronised."

Reappraising Shadow the Hedgehog, one of 2005's biggest misfiresThe Ultimate Life Form endures.Image credit: Sega Feature by Paul Cecchini Contributor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 The day was 8th March 2005. The event: the inaugural Walk of Game celebration, in which gaming icons Mario, Link, Sonic and Master Chief were recognised for their contributions to the industry. Sonic even got a nice trailer showcasing his most glorious exploits since his inception in 1991.As the video wrapped up, no one could have predicted what happened next. Shots of classic 2D Sonic were suddenly riddled with bullet holes. The screen, full of happy memories, was shattered, revealing a morose Shadow the Hedgehog and this hog was packing heat. The footage that followed featured Shadow running, jumping and bouncing around environments similar to previous 3D Sonic games, with one not-so-subtle new feature: guns. Laser guns, machine guns, pistols, you name it. And Shadow wasn't afraid to use them to blow the game's alien enemies away. No, this wasn't an April Fool's joke, a hallucination or a mod by an angry prepubescent wishing their colourful cartoon mascot would grow up and start handling his problems like an adult. This was a legitimate Sonic Team-developed game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise featuring firearms, and it was coming that holiday season - whether we liked it or not.Watch on YouTubeI vividly remember the myriad questions that ran through my teenage mind on first seeing the trailer. Why did this game exist? Who signed off on this utterly pants idea? A solo Shadow game wasn't far-fetched by any means - his surge in popularity after his debut in Sonic Adventure 2 was undeniable. But why take the Sonic series down the same dark, edgy road other franchises like Jak and Daxter and Prince of Persia had already trodden?To answer those questions meant looking at the paradigm shift the video game industry was undergoing at the time. Dark, brooding anti-heroes were all the rage in the early-to-mid 2000s. Colourful mascot platformers had been unceremoniously shoved off their pedestal as the dominant gaming genre by first- and third-person shooters - perhaps most notably by the Halo series. US gamers in particular were flocking to the genre in droves, and it was to that group that scenario writer and director Takashi Iizuka sought to appeal to with Shadow. At the same time, Iizuka made it clear that the game's mission was to expand the Sonic franchise for a more mature audience without alienating the existing fanbase. Unfortunately, things didn't quite pan out as Iizuka envisioned. Image credit: Fandom/SegaThe story opens with an amnesiac Shadow wandering the city outskirts, struggling to remember the secrets to his past that have eluded him since first being awakened in Sonic Adventure 2. As luck would have it, the one person who can answer his questions appears right in front of him at that exact moment: the evil alien Black Doom, who claims to have ties to Shadow and will divulge what he knows if Shadow gathers the Chaos Emeralds for him. The thing is, Black Doom is also trying to conquer the planet with his alien forces known as the Black Arms, leaving Shadow with a huge moral quandary on his hands.That's where arguably the most interesting aspect of the game comes into play: Shadow's morality system. Does he fight for the planet and fend off the alien invaders, side with the Black Arms in their conquest, or barrel ahead without paying heed to the conflict at all? Each level allows players to decide for themselves. In the opening stage Westopolis, for instance, you can gun down the soldiers repelling the alien invasion, save the city by taking out the aliens, or remain neutral and simply race to the end of the level. Your chosen path dictates which level you tackle next. It's up to the player to determine whether they want to go pure hero, pure villain, stay neutral, or bounce around like a morally confused pinball depending on their mood. Magazine adverts for Shadow the Hedgehog also played up the game's morality system. | Image credit: MobyGamesEventually, you'll reach one of the game's ten initial endings, ranging from Shadow decimating the planet's military, beating up Black Doom, deciding to take over the world himself, or a variety of paths in between. All in all, there are a whopping 326 different pathways you can take to clear the game. While only the most hardcore fans are likely to try, you have to admire Sonic Team's dedication.However, the story doesn't stop there. While you're free to play through the game once and call it quits, it's only by unlocking all ten initial endings that the final story becomes available. There is a canon ending, and - spoiler alert - at the end of the day, Shadow's a brave-hearted hero. Well, anti-brave-hearted hero, anyway. You won't see Sonic shooting an alien in the face with a machine gun anytime soon.Speaking of, let's delve deeper into its weapons-based combat. At its most basic, Shadow the Hedgehog plays like the 3D Sonic titles that preceded it; Shadow can run, jump, home in on enemies, and even engage in fisticuffs when his hands are free. Unlike previous Sonic games, however, upon defeating an enemy, Shadow can commandeer their weapons for his own use, including a wide variety of guns, swords, hammers, spears and grenade launchers. Players who recoil at the thought of using weapons in a Sonic game can finish the adventure without ever touching them, though they are significantly more effective at clearing out enemies than your standard homing attack - undoubtedly an intentional move by the developers to encourage their use. It's easy to argue that the ultimate lifeform using a weapon is as redundant as Sonic driving a car - to say nothing of the silliness of the concept - but from a gameplay perspective, the implementation is competent enough. Image credit: IGN/SegaThe game's edginess goes beyond firearms, though. Keeping with the more mature tone, the developers allowed the characters to drop their filters and belt out some salty language. You're not going to hear the characters you've known and loved for years dropping F-bombs (though the game did initially feature some stronger language, according to Shadow's voice actor Jason Griffith), but there is mild profanity throughout, mostly by Shadow himself. Of course, it's debatable whether it makes the game edgier or simply more meme-able. The alien enemies also bleed when hit, though their blood was changed from red to green to keep the game's rating down. It's relatively tame compared to many games in this day and age, but it was still certainly jarring to see in a Sonic the Hedgehog game nonetheless.So, then comes the million-dollar question. Taking everything into consideration, is Shadow the Hedgehog a good game?As someone who grew up with Sonic from the very beginning and was completely taken aback when Shadow's solo title was announced, it's... fine. Like, surprisingly fine. Was it a dumb idea? Absolutely. Was it a blatant attempt at cashing in on the dark and edgy game craze? Almost certainly. Was it executed decently despite all this? I personally lean toward yes, but 'decent' is about the highest praise I can give it.Plenty of Sonic games are still widely discussed by the community and greater internet decades after release, for better or worse. Sonic 06. Unleashed. Colours. Beyond the occasional meme, Shadow isn't one of them. Even Sonic Team itself tend to gloss over the game; the only legal way to play it is by purchasing a used copy for sixth generation consoles, and official references that aren't outright mocking it are rare to non-existent.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Watch on YouTubeThat's part of what makes the recently-released Sonic X Shadow Generations, and the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film, so significant. For the first time since Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Team is taking a deep dive back into the character's rich but troubled history as part of its broader Year of Shadow celebration. We even get to witness the unexpected return of Black Doom, undoubtedly a past version of the character brought about via the game's time travel shenanigans.Just as Shadow must once again confront his ugly past, so too is Sonic Team bravely acknowledging one of its biggest misfires in the hopes it can find something worth salvaging. While I doubt the new Shadow-centric story campaign is going to retroactively sway public opinion in favor of his original solo outing, it is nevertheless a potent reminder that, despite its laughable concept and numerous shortcomings, Shadow the Hedgehog did have some cool ideas.

Helldivers 2 developers respond to criticism of Killzone 2 crossover costUPDATE: Arrowhead gifting planned second wave of collaboration items for free.Image credit: Arrowhead News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Updated on Dec. 19, 2024 UPDATE 3.30pm UK: In response to concerns over pricing, Arrowhead will now gift all players the planned second set of Killzone 2 collaboration items for free.In a joint statement on Discord from both Arrowhead and Killzone developer Guerrilla Games, the studio acknowledged feedback from the community."As this was our first crossover offering, we've been listening to the response, and the feedback we've received from our community surveys is that crossover content is really high up on your wishlists," it reads. "At the same time, some of you are not happy with the prices of the items and we will revisit this."Because of all this, in partnership with our friends at Guerrilla (and as we're in the season of holiday cheer), we've decided to offer a gift to all players. Firstly, we are gifting to everyone the planned second set of the Helldivers x Killzone collaboration items today, free of charge. The distribution of those items will begin shortly, in two waves."As such we're also going to extend the duration of the items currently in the Superstore from five days to 10 days so that you have a chance to get hold of it and reduce the risk of missing out. We're also investigating solutions for how we can bring these items back permanently in the future."The studio also shared, in the image below, what's included in this second set. It appears the first set will remain available at the current price. The second wave of Killzone 2 items | Image credit: ArrowheadORIGINAL STORY 1pm UK: The CEO of Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead has responded to criticism from players of the high cost of its Killzone 2 crossover.The crossover with Sony's Killzone 2, revealed yesterday, adds a number of themed items and cosmetics to the in-game store and is the first of its kind for the game. However, players have criticised their cost.Usually, extra content is unlocked through a Warbond costing 1000 Super Credits (7.99), which includes multiple weapons, armours, and cosmetic items. The Killzone 2 items are instead available to purchase separately, with all six items totalling 1,975 Super Credits - so two batches of 1000 Super Credits totalling 15.98, essentially doubling the price.Helldivers 2 - Omens of Tyranny | PS5 & PC GamesWatch on YouTubeSeparately, the StA-52 assault rifle costs 615 Super Credits (the most expensive item) and the AC-1 Dutiful armour costs 500 Super Credits.Players have since responded negatively on the game's Discord server and reddit, with one reddit user posting "615 SC for a primary weapon is straight up ridiculous".Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt responded to a player on X who said the price "definitely felt steep"."Sorry you felt the price was steep, we are looking at all feedback," Pilestedt replied. "The reason we changed it from a Warbond was actually because there were concerns that having a higher priced Warbond would carry negative sentiment." To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Over on Discord, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani responded (thanks PC Gamer). "Hey, quick comment on the Helghast stuff. Firstly, this is our first collaboration so we'll be figuring it out as we go along. Let us know what you'd like to see in the future," he said. "Secondly it's optional. The more of this we sell, the more Illuminate-type stuff we can keep dropping for free."He later added: "This was my way of saying that the better the game does the more stuff we can do."Further, Jorjani noted while Arrowhead is partnered with Sony, pricing was the studio's decision. "This one is on us," he wrote."This feels more like Sony than AH" Bad news girls :( byu/VoreEconomics inHelldiversTo see this content please enable targeting cookies.As stated in the crossover announcement, the collaboration marks the start of a new five day rotation length in the store."Right now, many of you feel the items are in rotation for too short a time, and that you sometimes miss out on that killer look you had your eyes on," Arrowhead said. "At the same time, the more things we add to the store the longer it takes to come back into rotation."

Stalker 2 receives first major patch, including A-Life fixesAs game hits a profit.Image credit: GSC Game World News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on Dec. 19, 2024 GSC Game World has released the first major patch for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, which addresses over 1800 issues and fixes to the game's A-Life.What's more, the game has now recouped its investment and has turned a profit, according to the studio's owner Maxim Krippa in an interview with Forbes. Krippa also confirmed at least two expansions and multiplayer are planned, with no further details provided.The developer notes Patch 1.1 is "huge" so will take some time to download. It includes A-Life fixes and AI improvements, balance adjustments, crash fixes and performance optimisations, issues with specific story missions, and more.S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Launch TrailerWatch on YouTubeA-Life is the game's system to ensure NPCs appear natural. An FAQ from the studio reads: "The A-Life 2.0 system is responsible for ensuring that the Zone lives its own life regardless of your actions. The game world around you is changing all the time. Mutants, stalkers, bandits, and other inhabitants of the Zone move around, hunt, fight among themselves for lairs and territories, or join groups."The system was criticised by players for feeling too scripted and not organic enough. A number of fixes have now been implemented, increasing the rate players will encounter roaming NPCs, improving the navigation of NPCs, enhancing their motivation to expand territory and actively attack, and other changes.Further small AI improvements have been made to both NPCs and enemies.Elsewhere, several missions have received increased rewards, an infinite money exploit has been fixed, performance has been improved in largely populated areas, and plenty more.Check out a Steam notice for the full patch notes."Thank you very much for your support and feedback," the notes read. "We will continue working on the game, listening to your comments and reviews to investigate all possible issues and solve them as soon as possible."At its launch in November, Stalker 2 was criticised for its performance issues.However, in an interview with Eurogamer, GSC Game World's CEO Ievgen Grygorovych said delaying the game was not an option."You're so tired that you would just die if you say let's run an additional marathon," said Grygorovych. "We didn't have a chance to say let's do it more. We just had a chance of 'let's do until this moment - the release date - as much as we can'."Creative director Mariia Grygorovych also acknowledged issues with the game at launch. "It's not perfect, we need to fix everything, it has some problems," she said. "But it's a game! It's a game with soul, with feelings there, with love there. Even the problems, you can't fix them if you don't have a game."

Intel explains what went wrong with its new Arrow Lake desktop CPUsAnd declares four out of five identified issues "solved".Image credit: Digital Foundry Blog by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry Published on Dec. 19, 2024 Intel's new Core Ultra 200-series desktop processors, codenamed Arrow Lake, launched to seriously underwhelming reviews back in October. Now the American firm has collated five issues that it says are to blame for the difference between its own performance expectations and what reviewers experienced, with four of the five problems described as being already resolved by BIOS, Windows or application updates, and further performance enhancements to arrive in January 2025. For context, our Core i9 285K and Core i5 245K review saw performance wins for the 285K against the outgoing 14900K in three titles - Crysis 3 Remastered, Dragon's Dogma 2 and Forza Horizon 5 - while the 14900K retained its crown in the other eight games we tested, often by extreme margins. Here are the five issues, their root cause and current status, quoted from Intel's release: Performance TopicRoot CauseStatusUnusual scheduling, high run-to-run variation, low single-threaded scores, intermittent ~1.5x increase in DRAM latency, performance lower on Windows 11 24H2 vs 23H2Intel mistimed deployment of OS power plan settings ("PPM"), which customises DVFS, core parking and C-states. This caused a 6-30% performance lossSolved in Windows 11 26100.2161 or newerIntel Application Performance Optimiser (APO) not demonstrating expected performance resultsMissing PPM places CPU into state where APO profiles cannot apply, select reviewer BIOSes additionally set APO to disabled by default. This caused a 2-14% performance loss on APO-profiled titlesSolved in Windows 11 26100.2161 or newerBSOD when launching Easy Anti-Cheat titles on Windows 11 24H2Known issue with Easy Anti-Cheat KMD and Windows 11 24H2, issue exacerbated by disabling Virtualisation-Based Security (VBS)Solved with new Easy Anti-Cheat driver distributed by EpicSelect performance settings misconfigured in some pre-release BIOSesConsistency of VIP performance settings not sufficiently checked by Intel, including ReBAR, Intel APO, compute ring frequency, IMC gear, sustained/transient power limits. This caused a 2-14% performance lossSolved in customer BIOSes now availableNew BIOS performance enhancementsFresh optimisations developed for upcoming BIOS updates, currently in validation by Intel and its partners, single digit performance enhancement estimated among a 35-game geomeanMotherboard BIOSes planned for January 2025The table makes for interesting reading, and Intel's community blog on the subject goes into further detail on each identified issue too. In it, Intel promises "a complete performance digest, inclusive of the January BIOSes" at CES early next year, so we should get a better idea of exactly the performance differentials we should expect with all five fixes applied. We also saw extremely poor performance in Cyberpunk 2077 in particular, and that seems to have been solved in game update 2.2 if the patch notes are to be believed. If you are one of the vanishingly small number of people to be running a Core i5 245K, Core i7 265K or Core i9 285K system, then you've probably already updated to the latest Windows and BIOS versions, but it's worth doing so now if you haven't - and again in mid January when further BIOS updates are made available - to ensure that your system is delivering maximum performance. Intel says that the January BIOSes can be "identified with Intel microcode version 0x114 and Intel CSME Firmware Kit 19.0.0.1854v2.2 (or newer)." We'll look to retest the Core i9 285K and Core i5 245K once these January BIOS updates are available, as we did see much worse performance than we expected and it would be nice to see what these proccessors are truly capable of. We're expecting to hear more from Intel at that time - as well as rivals AMD and Nvidia - so stay tuned for our reports from CES in the new year.

Capcom has detailed its targeted performance for Monster Hunter Wilds on consoles, confirming a day one patch will be available on PS5 Pro.The game's director Yuya Tokuda shared details in a pre-launch community update stream covering various elements of the game following its open beta test. PC specs have already been revealed, but in this stream performance targets on console were shared.Both PS5 and Xbox Series X will include a Prioritise Graphics mode at 30fps and a Prioritise Framerate mode at 60fps. Xbox Series S will only run the game at 30fps, while on PC the frame rate will of course vary depending on hardware.Monster Hunter Wilds - Pre-Launch Community UpdateWatch on YouTubeNo specific details were provided on the PS5 Pro patch, beyond confirming it will enhance the graphics and will be available from launch. More details will be provided closer to launch."The target frame rate we have here was not being achieved in the OBT build," said Tokuda (via translator). "To be honest it was an earlier version that wasn't quite as optimised and there were also some rendering issues with the graphics when using frame priority mode."The current full version has seen an improvement on fine details like fur and feathers and is "getting closer to that target of 60fps".The Xbox version of the game has had a similar improvement to PS5, while on PC the development team is looking to lower the minimum required specs, though the details are still being worked on.Capcom is also considering releasing a benchmark tool for PC to help players determine if the game will be playable on their machines. Performance targets across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC | Image credit: CapcomIn the stream, Tokuda shared a short snippet of gameplay to show the performance improvements compared with the open beta test.The development team previously acknowledged performance issues in the Monster Hunter Wild open beta test."The purpose of this test is to allow players to experience a limited portion of Monster Hunter Wilds and also to verify various technical aspects such as network load and overall operation prior to the game's full release," it wrote on Steam."Please note that the final product is still in development. Certain aspects such as game specifications and balance may differ in the full version. We are committed to ensuring the quality of the final product."Monster Hunter Wilds is set for release across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam) on 28th February next year.

Audeze MM-500 review: planar magnetic comes at a premiumMore expensive than you'd even imagine. Review by Reece Bithrey Contributor Published on Dec. 19, 2024 Audeze is an American brand best known for making everything from some serious audiophile grade headphones to some of the best gaming headsets we've tested. Their MM-500 is more of the former option, as a big, chunky and impressive set of planar magnetic cans which have an eye-wateringly high price tag to boot - you'll just need to fork out 1699/$1699, no big deal really.I've tested some reasonably dear headphones before, although none have made quite the same initial impression as the MM-500s. Whereas the likes of the Focal Bathys come with a sleek, gorgeous hard case, Audeze has chosen to go for a full-on briefcase for transporting these cans in. It's made of a blend of metal and plastic, and is seriously sturdy, while inside, there's a generous helping of moulded foam for transporting the MM-500s. You feel like you're a member of the US Secret Service opening the briefcase up.Once you open the briefcase up, you're greeted with the MM-500s. They're fully metal, with a blend of machined alumnium and spring steel, which gives a premium feel while also being reasonably light at 495g. That's still quite heavy against a pair of Grados, for instance, although is lighter than you'd initially expect. The MM-500s look like a classic pair of Audeze cans, with a thinner headband, earcups with oval cutouts on the outside, and big, plush angled earpads that are wonderfully soft amd supportive, while also coming with a heavier clamping force to ensure they stick on your noggin. Those are some thick earcups.The weight of the MM-500s takes some getting used to, especially with the stiffer headband, although placing it over a stack of books can help to loosen it up a tad if the clamping force is too much out of the box, according to Audeze. It is on the tighter side, but I didn't have much of an issue with it when using these in the evenings to listen to some tunes or play some games with.The MM-500's earcups are perhaps the opposite to the Grado Hemps I've also tested recently. Where the Hemps were a thinner, shallower option with fabric padding, the MM-500 has these luscious, deep cups with some of the plushest leather I've felt on a set of headphones outside of my own Focal Bathys I use every day. The earcups are also angled to conform to the fact that people's ears aren't actually parallel to the sides of your head - they're angled out a little. This means sound goes right into your ears, as opposed to on other headphones which lack the adjustability for you to swivel the earcups to achieve this same purpose.Your ears also sit quite close to the drivers inside the MM-500, although they aren't necessarily drivers per se. After all, these are planar magnetic headphones, as opposed to the more common dynamic drivers. I've not an expert on this by any means, but, in essence being planar magnetic means that they work by suspending the headphones diaphragm material between magnetic fields which cause vibration, as opposed to working by placing the driver over a coil that's pulled by a magnet, in the case of dynamic drivers. It means that planar magnetic cans need more surface area to work, hence the fact that the MM-500 are quite bulky against more 'standard' headphones. There's an important name on there.In terms of their tuning, it's here where the MM-500 mark a departure from previous Audeze efforts, with a move more towards a reference set of cans, in the same vein as Sennheiser's HD660S2. After all, these are designed perhaps more for music production and studio work than they are for generalist use. This is arguably due to the name that quietly adorns the MM-500's earcups. Look closely, and you'll see Manny Maroquin's name on the side. He might not be a name you've heard of, but the albums and songs by artists he's produced or mixed you most certainly will have. Taylor Swift's Red for instance, Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten or Bruno Mars' Unorthodox Jukebox, have all had work on by Marroquin, and he's produced the MM-500 in collaboration with Audeze. That's quite the endorsement.With this point in mind, it changes how you view the MM-500. After all, they might not be as exciting or energetic as other cans out there, but they're designed with a specific purpose in mind - to give the most accurate view of music possible. Fundamentally, if audio sounds as it should when mixed in here, it's going to be excellent elsewhere. The other thing about these being designed for audio mixing means they come with the massive quarter-inch jack on the end, but do come with a 3.5mm adapter for plugging into more normal things, so you can use the MM-500s with your laptop, or a DAC.I should say that you can genuinely use these with a MacBook or otherwise - they're remarkably easy to drive, with a low impedance of just 18 ohms. While it isn't a foolproof method of measuring how easy headphones are to work with, it means you don't necessarily require specialist audio gear for them to work, and get plenty loud. I had no issues using them with my MacBook Pro, or usual gaming PC for that matter with their bundled headphone jacks, although giving them more oomph with a DAC or DAP is likely to yield higher-quality listening. These are also open backs, so sound gets out.Music out of the MM-500s, whether it's Latin pop, hard rock or jazz fusion, has this wonderfully smooth and warm quality that sounds excellent. Upon plugging them into either my HiBy R3 II, FiiO M11S or Chord Mojo 2 DAC, I was greeted with some gorgeous audio with a deep but not overbearing low-end, excellent and more prominent mid-range and smooth treble. A listen to Riverman from Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds exemplified this wonderfully, with reassuring bass, fantastic vocal handling and solid, crisp treble with the track's cymbal work.That deep low-end was also reflected in the fantastic Let's Groove from Earth, Wind & Fire, with the track's prominent funky bassline, while Rush's YYZ carried appropriate, accurate oomph with wonderful extension. As for the mid-range, James Taylor's Lighthouse was gorgeous, with the MM-500 handling his vocals well, as well as the song's prominent acoustic guitar and drum work, while Peter Mayer's The Last Island was a rich soundscape fronted by his vocals, and the track's brilliant percussion work.The MM-500 also handles treble with a smooth and crisp finish, as opposed to it being too sharp, as with some other headphones I've tested. This was demonstrated well with the intermitted cymbal crashes and tambourine hits in Phil Collins' I'm Not Moving, while on Ralph MacDonald's Calypso Breakdown, the track's constant bell hits were handled with panache. Steely Dan's Do It Again is always a track I use for testing treble, with the song's percussion-laden introduction a potential minefield for some cans. The MM-500 served up a sublime result with everything from its cymbals to chimes and organ having this excellent smoothness and precision to it. The MM-500 worked a treat with my FiiO M11S.The soundstage here isn't as wide as other, even more 'affordable' open backs I've tested, although there is a good sense of width and awe-inspiring precision, such as on Rush's 2112, the legendary 20 minute long multi-part prog epic I always use for testing headphones. The track's 'Discovery' section, which builds from limited electric guitar parts with ambient water noise into intermittent vocals and even harder rock is a particular highlight for testing, as it gives you a sense of how wide and spacious a set of cans can be, particularly at the beginning. In addition, I've always paid attention to the position of the bongos on Earth, Wind & Fire's September. Get it right, and they're far off in the distance on the right hand side, with an excellent sense of placement.The more pronounced mid-range in amongst the MM-500's frequency also helped to make games immersive too, with footsteps being prominent in the likes of CS:2, and the open back nature of the headphones also helping immersion. The solid stereo imaging also helped my immersion in Forza Horizon 5 races with engine notes of nearby cars, while also working well in Assetto Corsa, too. GTA Online was also fantastic fun with the MM-500, with the fun of the game's drift racing or when I was simply running over pedestrians and picking fights with other online players in the midst of Los Santos.The Audeze MM-500 is a brilliant set of planar magnetic headphones that, while designed for studio use for mixing and production first and foremost, quite frankly surprised me for how good they are for both gaming and for general music listening. They've got a deep bass that isn't overbearing, an excellent and precise midrange and smooth treble that made everything from Genesis to Grand Theft Auto a sublime listen. The big problem, of course, is the big price they come with - 1699/$1699 is purely for pro-grade peeps or those audiophiles with a fair chunk of change. Are they worth the price? In the context of what you're getting, probably. Would I recommend you buy them, though? No.Allow me to explain - the MM-500s are simply some of the best headphones I've used for purely listening, given their reference-like neutral profile and immense detail, although if you're looking for a bit more energy in your music and more fun, then the Grado Hemps are wonderful, and cost a third of the price of these. Or, if you want the fun of planar magnetics without spending loads, go grab a pair of Audeze Maxwells, which is one of our favourite gaming headsets.I'm not saying the MM-500 is a contextually bad set of cans, because they really aren't - the last 1600 or so words should demonstrate that. But they're only worth it if you want a neutral sound, the reputation of these planar magnetic drivers, and also if you've got 1699/$1699 to burn. Otherwise, they're a bit of a difficult sell.

The big PlayStation 5 Pro tech interview with Mark Cerny and Mike Fitzgerald"Well, it's not all going to be rainbows and path tracing." Interview by Oliver Mackenzie Contributor Additional contributions byWill JuddPublished on Dec. 18, 2024 Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro is a powerful mid-generation upgrade that delivers machine learning upscaling, improved ray tracing and more raw graphics horsepower. We've spent hours testing and discussing its capabilities, but it's always fascinating to see the other side: how it was built and how its software was designed. With that in mind, Digital Foundry's Oliver Mackenzie spoke to PS5 Pro lead system architect Mark Cerny and core technology director at Insomniac Games, Mike Fitzgerald. This tech interview covers a lot of ground through its 30-minute runtime, including the challenges and opportunities of PSSR upscaling, the thinking behind the hardware design of the new console and how developers have approached the new options - and performance - afforded to them. This piece arrives hand in glove with a deep dive presentation into the architecture of PS5 Pro with the interview taking place on October 30th, so while the topics covered are very extensive, elements like the variable nature of PSSR implementations across different titles weren't apparent at the time of the conversation.The discussion also touches on where Sony is looking to go in the future. As Rich postulated in his PS5 Pro review, as well as being a powerful machine in the here and now, this console is also a great opportunity for Sony and game developers alike to get to grips with the RT and ML tech that will define the next generation of games - and that's echoed in the conversation here. If you're looking for some hints as to the direction Sony is taking in PlayStation 6, there's plenty to think about in this piece. As always, the text has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Here's the full interview with PS5 Pro lead system architect Mark Cerny and Insomniac Games core technology director, Mike Fitzgerald. Watch on YouTubeDigital Foundry: I wanted to start off here by talking about PSSR, PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. There has been a little bit of a difference in terms of approach between developers like Naughty Dog and Square Enix in terms of the modes that they're offering. Some studios are focusing on offering many modes, while others are using PSSR as an opportunity to homogenise their existing modes into one ultimate PS5 Pro experience. Do you have any preference for either of these approaches? Mark Cerny: My preference is that the game developers do what they feel is best for their titles, so this is really a question for Mike.Mike Fitzgerald: When we make a game and we work as a whole studio and team on delivering it, we're making some really tough trade-offs between what we want to present at a higher frame rate and what we can present at 30fps. The nice thing about being approached with new hardware is that suddenly those compromises we made while shipping the game go away. We're able to bring together a lot of what made the fidelity mode the fidelity mode and what made the performance mode the performance mode on the PS5 Pro. After spending some time doing that and having a really nice performance pro mode together, attention starts to turn to, well, maybe some people still want to play at 30fps and we do have this nice new piece of hardware, so what other fun things can we do with it? Digital Foundry: Yeah, it does depend a lot on the game. For the Insomniac games on PS5, you have so much RT in there that you can pack in all kinds of different configurations. Whereas I think a lot of other developers are going to be in a position where they can now deliver a good 4K image at 60fps, so maybe that's the way to go with one mode. Mark Cerny: Yeah. I knew there would be a lot of different strategies. I was upfront about this in that first video I did, with six games that were shown and the first three do the "almighty" mode and the other three titles do something completely different.Digital Foundry: We've seen from developers that there have been a wide range of upscaling factors that are going into this PSSR process. We've seen in a title like Alan Wake 2 that's doing 864p to 4K, while in the Insomniac titles it's more often scaling from 1440p or 1584p to 4K. Does the Sony team provide guidance with regards to those upscale factors, or is it just recommended that developers roll their own and see what kind of image quality you get? Mark Cerny: I'll talk a little bit about the tech we're developing and then Mike can talk about how they're using it. There's a lot of research going on there. We support one mode that covers a range of 2.5:1 to 1:1. And whether that's an ideal long-term strategy or not, we're definitely talking about it. We're looking at the low end of the range and the issues we see there versus the high end of the range. So I really wouldn't take that current 2.5:1 as any sort of indication about where we'll be years from now. Mike Fitzgerald: Yeah, I would say a lot of it depends too on what you're moving from. So the TAA that we had been leveraging as a studio - and still do - was really well suited for about 1440p up to 4K, but really struggled when it got down closer to the 1080p to 1280p range. PSSR behaves very well at that range, so for us, it's a big improvement and gives us an opportunity to spend our time differently there. Mark Cerny: Yeah, that fur on performance RT.Mike Fitzgerald: Yeah [laughter]. It really struggled for me playing at home in the performance modes that we had on the base PS5. And so to see that quality come back... To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Digital Foundry:PSSR is your first implementation of an ML-based upscaling model, and we're seeing wide ranges in terms of upscaling factors. In the future, are you potentially looking to increase those upscaling factors or deliver better quality out of a new version of PSSR? We heard that there were quality improvements in PSSR pre-launch, so do you think that will continue in the future? Mark Cerny: We're definitely continuing with development of these ML-based libraries for game graphics. It's just that there's so many targets to go up against. Like in that talk today, I was also going over frame generation, frame extrapolation, ray tracing, denoising and the like. So what order and what focus? Those are really good questions. Additionally, complicating this is that we announced Project Amethyst with AMD today. So it's not just us developing the networks; we have a partner that we're doing it with. And of course, what the partner feels about that technology direction and where the focus should be is also very important.Digital Foundry:Okay. So in that vein, on PC at the moment, we have a lot of technologies - frame generation, AI upscaling, frame extrapolation, ray reconstruction, which are doing pretty profound things to the makeup of a game image in real time in a pretty lightweight manner. Are those areas that you're exploring for future PSSR upgrades? Mark Cerny: Definitely. Well, it wouldn't be PSSR - PSSR is PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. Spectral is our branding for the ML libraries for graphics, just like Tempest is our branding for our 3D audio. And so it's going to be Spectral something for all of that. And yeah, we're definitely looking at what it would be that would be that Spectral something, if not Super Resolution. But Super Resolution is a very good place to start.Digital Foundry: And in terms of PSSR and how it's implemented on a per-game basis, presumably developers will have to go and patch in to upgrade to new versions of PSSR, right? Because you wouldn't necessarily want new versions of PSSR in the mix there without a title update, or is that something you're thinking about?Mark Cerny: Well, there are a lot of interesting possibilities there. And honestly, I don't know at this time. It's wonderful to think that the game could say it's okay to update or a user could make a decision to update. Just how all of those pieces fit together, I don't know.Mike Fitzgerald: From a developer perspective, I think we can look at our games differently a lot of the time. And I know some developers would say, "I don't want the system to touch what I have confirmed looks good to me and players." Other developers would say, "Oh, your system is going to go and make my game look better for people without me having to do anything? Great." So there's options there.A look at how Insomniac improved Marvel's Spider-Man 2 with RT and PSSR improvements, along with a quick look at other titles from the studio.Watch on YouTubeDigital Foundry: With PSSR, you can have a pretty tremendous improvement in image quality while internal resolution stays similar. Is it a challenge to figure out that messenging, that this is a profoundly improved image despite the fact that the internal resolution is comparable? I know that we're part of this problem for sure...Mark Cerny: You're not part of the problem. I've heard you talk. I've spent too much time on DF. But I've heard you talk about how you really shouldn't be looking at internal rendering resolution and drawing too much in the way of conclusions from that. You really need to be looking at image quality. And I was trying to communicate exactly the same message today, that we need to change the way we're talking about resolution. Maybe we shouldn't be talking about it at all. The difficulty is if you don't have a number, it's very hard to have that conversation.Digital Foundry: Yeah, we tried to get away from it with a model that would score approximate image quality, but it's a big challenge in terms of communication. Resolution remains a big part of that discussion, for the moment at least. One thing we saw with PSSR in Ratchet and Clank in particular is that it appeared to improve the stability and resolve of RT reflections. Is that something you've seen across other titles that you're working on, and would do you expect that to carry over to other games with RT reflections and PSSR?Mike Fitzgerald: Ray-traced reflections are an interesting challenge because they are a composite of multiple images in the frame, right? And so with the information you feed into an algorithm like PSSR, you're limited in how much you can describe about each pixel. An example would be if you're passing the depth buffer in to tell PSSR how far things are from the camera, it can't tell it how far the window is and how far the reflecting thing is and how far the thing behind the window, right? As you turn the camera, you have some velocity information about how the window is changing, but maybe not information about how the reflecting thing in the mirror is changing. This can be really hard to encapsulate in an analytical algorithm like TAA, so that's one of the areas we were hoping to see improvement in PSSR as it potentially has more capability to recognise that type of situation or adapt to it.Digital Foundry: With PS4 Pro, the focus was targeting 4K displays. With PS5 Pro, you're achieving an enormous improvement in the power level. Did you have a certain kind of game experience in mind to deliver to players when you were designing this console? Or was it more that we're going to engineer big performance improvements and the developers are going to show players what that looks like? Mark Cerny: It's a mid-generation release. So really the target is better graphics and it felt like the big three were the right things to go after: larger GPU, more advanced ray tracing, and ML. Not that complex of an approach!Personally speaking, it's been just great digging into the ML aspects of this and gaining some knowledge there. Because we know that's the future we're heading into. And so what an opportunity to gain all that knowledge with the Pro, rather than waiting for the start of a true generation and having to get everything right with no experience whatsoever.Digital Foundry:One interesting thing about the PS5 Pro is that while GPU, memory and storage have all been improved, the CPU has stayed the same apart from a clock bump that developers can tap into. Why wasn't the CPU upgraded? Mark Cerny: It's really just a question of where you put your resources. And I wasn't seeing - and I didn't think I would see - that many titles that couldn't run at 60. That's kind of my litmus test. I'm not asking, "do all the games run at 120?" at this point in time. I'm asking, "do all the games run at 60?" You can count the AAA exceptions on one hand, I think, for games that didn't eventually run at 60. And so it seemed if we threw pretty much all of our resources into the graphics, that that would be the best approach.Mike Fitzgerald: Right. I would say as a developer, the day Mark comes and says, "Hey, we want to give you guys a presentation about what we're thinking about for the next hardware." That's a fun meeting for everyone and we were very happy with where the focus was here. Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 7 upgrade for PS5 Pro offers up big benefits for ray tracing, performance and PSVR 2 - it's probably the most comprehensive package we've seen.Watch on YouTubeDigital Foundry: With regards to the machine learning hardware in the console, do you see that as a solution for the fact that you don't get good cost scaling on new silicon nodes any more, of the kind that historically enabled mid-gen console refreshes? Mark Cerny: Yeah. The strategies that we had up through PS4 Pro or the like... I wouldn't say it's reached a limit, but mostly it's about making the GPU bigger or memory faster. And so, as we look to the future, the improvements will be ray tracing. I think we're going to see a lot happening there. And then everything we can get done with ML. Digital Foundry: The PS5 Pro seems to target similar GPU clocks as in the base PS5 model. Given that the GPU is larger, would you run up against power constraints there, and would clock speeds therefore be a bit more variable? Mark Cerny: That's a great question. It's pretty much identical. So, PlayStation 5 capped at 2.23GHz, PlayStation 5 Pro caps at 2.35GHz, which I did not talk about today because it's just such a distraction. I don't want anybody doing flop math based on 2.35GHz because, at the end of the day, when we do the set design, we tune the set design so that the games are running at about 2.17GHz. We don't want it to get too bulky. We don't want to have the fan have to be too large or the like. So, I mean, that 2.35GHz is really a red herring. I don't think too many games will get up to that too often.Digital Foundry: In the presentation, you positioned the PS4/PS5 and PS4 Pro/PS5 Pro as existing along separate tracks: the left-hand track is for generational leaps and the right track is for mid-gen refreshes, enhanced consoles. We're in an era where developers are shipping cross-gen more than they ever have, but does that chart reflect that you still believe fundamentally in generational leaps, going from one generation to the next generation, big changes in software, big changes in what people can deliver on that hardware? Mark Cerny: We're not making PCs. We're making a few very specific things, right? The Pro consoles are very tightly targeted around GPU. But when a new generation starts, then it gets opened up - what are we doing with the CPU? What are we doing with the amount of memory? What are we doing with haptics? It's a whole new experience for developers. I think it's really helpful, even if we drop words like "revolution" from the conversation, that developers can ask the question, "OK, this game will ship on one and the next, but how can it be a different creature for each of those?" Not gameplay-wise, but in terms of the visual experience. Digital Foundry: There's one other question that I had about just the kind of way that you're positioning these consoles, which is that we're talking about an era where rasterised performance improvements are maybe not as important as they used to be, and the use of upscaling technologies is changing the way that we perceive all of those metrics. Mark Cerny: Well, it's not all going to be rainbows and path tracing, so...Digital Foundry: [Laughter] Well, exactly. So along those lines, the PS5 Pro still has 67 percent more WGPs (work group processors) than the standard PS5. Even though this is the potential future of graphics rendering - a massive focus on AI and ray tracing - it's not completely here today, is it? Mark Cerny: Sure. What was that like Mike? Because you had a moderate boost for the raw graphics performance, and then you had a much better boost for the ray tracing. How did you tweak the engine?Mike Fitzgerald: Well, the nice part was that those things stacked together in a really constructive way. So we were able to use the faster RT performance to get some time to spend to drive the upscaler further. The more sizable GPU came back to cut frame-times down. So I think they stacked well for a game that was designed for the base PS5 and already had little bits of each of those pieces.Mark Cerny: Well, I liked it because very simplistically looking at it, it's faster, and so you've just sped up your rendering, and now you have 5ms to spend on whatever. And so why not spend them on improving your RT or adding a new widget or whatever? If you're making an engine, nobody is ever coming to you and saying, "you now have 5ms to do whatever you want to do that's just gravy." Right? That doesn't happen. You're desperately trying to get to 60fps.This interview was part of a press event where we had a very early look at Mark Cerny's new PS5 Pro deep dive presentation. Here, Oliver, Rich and Alex share their thoughts. Watch on YouTubeDigital Foundry: Yeah, I thought one compelling part of the presentation was seeing a 16ms workload on PS5 become an 11ms workload on PS5 Pro. Then all of a sudden you've got this big chunk of frame-time left over, looking very scrumptious. Then you can devote your resources to tackling RT, to doing machine learning upscaling, doing a lot more on the hardware. Can you explain the Amethyst initiative with AMD? What's the vision for your collaboration and what it will mean going forward?Mark Cerny: There's two components. It's a deep collaboration. It's multi-year. Don't expect some massive hardware announcement immediately coming out of this. One target is more optimal architectures for machine learning. And I look at that through a very narrow lens because we're making a console. And so I really want to hear about, number one, does it support these lightweight CNNs that we need for the graphics? But I'd also like to hear about, people want to do their AI or something on it. Is it something that is portable? Is it something that's easy to create? Because you never want to lock people into just one hardware architecture when they make that stuff. So working on this generalised architecture that's particularly good at the ML needs of consoles. I suspect AMD might frame it slightly differently [laughter].Digital Foundry: So for Sony, it's that focus on these really lightweight models that you're using in real-time rendering.Mark Cerny: That's my personal focus. AMD, of course, is incredibly broad and they have big machinery out in the cloud and they have laptops. They're in so many different spaces. But I look at it as, yes, I'd love to see these things happen. And the other part of it is for these neural networks, they are time consuming to make. I think, with no exaggeration, PSSR is the toughest technical project I've ever been in in my life. And it's just marvelous to have a partner who also has resources and expertise that can be going into very much the same targets. And what are those targets? It is super resolution. It is. I guarantee it's possible to do better than PSSR. And that's just scratching the surface of where we can head. I mean, I mentioned frame generation and the like, but there are uses I know are out there that we haven't even started talking about yet. So it's to develop those together.Now, to clarify, we're talking about developing components, not developing libraries. Because our customers are different and when it comes down to it, the hardware is a little bit different. I hope it rung true when I was saying super resolution on PCs is a little bit different from consoles, because we tend to use a variable upscaling ratio and PCs tend be fixed upscaling ratios. So having this ability to grab those co-developed algorithms and then integrate them separately is really going to be a boost across the board.Digital Foundry: We're curious about how the PS5 Pro hardware handles backwards compatibility. We know the PS5 Pro doesn't have a perfect butterfly GPU configuration like on the PS4 Pro. Mark Cerny: It's a great question. We learned a lot from PS4 Pro - going into that, I thought we had to replicate pretty much the exact timing that the game was running... and it turns out you don't need to. The timing can drift a bit and the game will still work, though there's a limit to how far that can go. We did see a few titles - like 11, out of thousands - that wouldn't respond well when did PS4 Pro to the radically different timing. But in general, the games are pretty robust when it comes to the timing. So the shorter answer is that on PS5 Pro we just didn't worry about it, and the games are working. We still need binary compatibility - all of the registers that the game was hitting need to be there. But we don't need whatever was taking a thousand cycles before to still take a thousand cycles. It's okay if it takes 600 or 900 or even occasionally 1100. Mike Fitzgerald: Well, I think we've already seen it. We've already seen that consistency of ray tracing performance pay off even in the Spider-Man 2 patch we've done. So we're able to put in RTAO. We have some RT shadows in there and places where we were bumping up against those divergence limits. In fact, for the water reflections in Spider-Man 2, we cheated them all so that they were less divergent than would be physically accurate in the water to sort of scrape that performance back. And so we're already seeing opportunities where it's paying off for us.Mark Cerny: I think path tracing on PS5 Pro would be a little tricky to do. But, you know, I wouldn't put it past the developers. There are some amazing engineers out there. Mike Fitzgerald: It sounds like a challenge. Digital Foundry: What is your kind of vision for what developers will be achieving on PS5 Pro in the future? If you're looking at PS5 Pro software in a few years, what would you be happy to see?Mark Cerny: I'm happy with the launch line-up, to be honest. We view it very simply - we're just making tools for the developers. How the developers use those tools, that's up to them. We've seen a couple different ways of doing it, I think right now. Part of the fun will be, you know, in about three or five years, there will be a lot more different ways to use these tools that we hadn't anticipated. Look forward to it.

PS5 Pro deep dive reaction: GPU and RT improvements, PSSR and Sony's new AMD Amethyst partnershipPlus: what this all means for future PlayStation hardware.Image credit: Digital Foundry Feature by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry Additional contributions byAlex Battaglia, Oliver Mackenzie, and Richard LeadbetterPublished on Dec. 18, 2024 When Sony revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro, it did so in a very different manner to the reveal of PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation 5. While lead system architect Mark Cerny was 'master of ceremonies' for the Pro reveal, the debut has a shortlived nine-minute affair - and a good proportion of that run-time celebrated the achievements of the standard PlayStation 5 console. It was a far cry from the detailed presentation given for the reveal of Sony's first 'Pro' console and somewhat bereft of detail compared to the now legendary 'Road to PS5' presentation given by Cerny in March 2020. We were left hungry for more details - and now, they have finally arrived.A good three months after the reveal, Sony has delivered a brand new deep-dive presentation into the hardware design and indeed the vision behind PlayStation 5 Pro - and it's important stuff. The philosophy behind the console marks a sea-change in the way that consoles will be made. While the core graphics rendering tech of the PlayStation 5 Pro has been enhanced over the standard machine, Cerny sees a future where machine learning plays a key role in console design, and while rasterisation is nearing its limits, he sees vast scaling in ray tracing capabilities going forward.It's a vision that shares commonalities with Nvidia's strategy over the last six years, except the impression we get is that AMD will continue to be Sony's partner of choice in delivering this new vision. To that end, a new 'Amethyst' collaboration between Sony and AMD has been announced.Digital Foundry's Oliver Mackenzie had the chance to see the new Cerny presentation several weeks ago and to interview Mark Cerny himself, alongside Mike Fitzgerald - Insomniac's director of core technology. However, the presentation itself is something that all Digital Foundry team members were eager to discuss, so here's our reaction to the talk - and, of course, an overview of everything we've learned.Here's the full PS5 Pro deep dive, hosted by Mark Cerny. Watch on YouTubeGPU overview: RDNA 2.x, 16.7TFThe most obvious evolution from the base PS5 to the PS5 Pro comes in terms of its graphics processing horsepower. Rather than increasing CPU performance, improving storage speeds or targeting higher resolution displays, as you might expect from a brand new console, the main focus with PS5 Pro is shoring up performance and image quality with a more capable GPU. Interestingly, the PS5 Pro GPU is still based on AMD's RDNA 2 (RX 6000-series) architecture, but with some features backported from RDNA 3 (RX 7000-series) - and from RDNA 4 (RX 8000-series, expected 2025) as well.At a typical clock speed of 2.17GHz, the PS5 Pro is capable of a 16.7TF of performance - half the 33.5TF erroneously quoted before launch. This is more directly comparable to the circa 10TF number attached to the base PS5, versus the inflated (or "flop-flated", as Mark Cerny puts it) RDNA 3 teraflop counts. Other specs line up with early PS5 Pro leaks, including 30 WGPs, 60 compute units and a max boost of 2.35GHz - though this frequency isn't likely to be seen under normal operating conditions, perhaps due to power constraints. The maximum clock speed of the standard PS5 is 2.23GHz, but the presentation suggests that typical operating speed is the same 2.17GHz as PS5 Pro so typical TFLOPs is circa 10TF, rarely hitting the 10.23TF quoted in the original specs. As this generation has proven, however, TFLOPs is proving to be an increasingly meaningless metric - a situation acknowledged by Mark Cerny in the new presentation.As for why PlayStation 5 Pro isn't fully embracing later AMD graphics architectures, the reason is very straightforward: shader code for the PS5 GPU would not function on later AMD hardware, and there's no means by which those shaders could be re-compiled in existing games. Shader compilation on the fly? It's not viable for PS5 and - trust us - you wouldn't want it either. Therefore, PS5 Pro has to use the same RDNA 2.x baseline, with extensions added for new features - such as enhanced ray tracing.In terms of other features, we also know from separate disclosures to developers that the PS5 Pro has the full RDNA 2 feature set, including mesh shaders and hardware VRS, and there's an extra 2GB of (slower) DDR5 memory on board. Of that, there's over one gigabyte of extra memory available to developers. The GDDR6 memory used here is also around 28 percent faster than on the base PS5 - 576GB/s versus 448GB/s - despite being connected on a similar 256-bit bus. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Ray tracing improvementsPart of the PS5 Pro's appeal is its significant improvement in terms of RT performance, allowing developers to use these features more liberally in PS5 Pro-enhanced titles without sacrificing image quality or frame-rates to the same extent as on the base PS5. This is accomplished through the RDNA 2.x architecture of the base PS5, with new extensions added from later RDNA technology.The PS5 repurposes the texture mapping units to do box and triangle intersection tests for ray tracing, with the PS5 Pro speeding up this part of the process by two or three times. The Pro also supports BVH8 rather than BVH4, which also offers a speed-up. PS5 Pro also adds stack management in hardware, which again helps the traversal stage in ray tracing and was previously only seen in Intel and Nvidia hardware, not AMD. Finally, more divergent RT sees a greater performance boost than more coherent RT on PS5 Pro. This divergent/coherent spectrum essentially describes the complexity of RT calculations, with shadows and reflections on flat surfaces being more coherent, and reflections on curved or bumpy surfaces being more divergent. Again, Nvidia and Intel have come up with good ways to handle more divergent RT, such as hardware sorting units and shader execution reordering, and though we don't see exact replicas of those ideas here, the traversal upgrades and move to BVH8 ought to mean the PS5 Pro is much better equipped in its predecessor to tackle these more computationally expensive RT calculations. That opens the door to developers more easily using a wider range of material roughness for reflections, for example, rather than only sticking to mirror-like or near-mirror-like reflections. Mark Cerny postulates that there is a limit to how far we can take rasterisation. One avenue to exceed those limitations is through RT, which has a lot of potential to scale with more research. Seeing these improvements from Sony suggests that RDNA 4 is pushing more in that direction, which is exciting stuff. Of course, we still don't know for sure how RDNA 4's RT performance will turn out - it looks like a significant step forward, but there's still no equivalent to the RT core featured in Nvidia's RTX 20-series architecture onwards, which allows for more concurrent workloads. AMD has discussed in presentations how it's using greater amounts of cache on its PC GPUs to fit more into the BVH, so it'll be fascinating to see how the desktop RDNA 4 chips perform with that additional improvement. Enhanced ray tracing is a key feature of PS5 Pro - and Polyphony Digital really puts the technology through its paces in the Pro-enhanced version of Gran Turismo 7.Watch on YouTubeMachine learning and PSSRAs well as the PS5 Pro's baseline RDNA 2.x being upgraded with what Sony calls "future RDNA" for ray tracing, it also comes with "custom RDNA" for machine learning, specifically PSSR upscaling. Rather than using an existing upscaler, Mark Cerny told us that Sony focused on speed and minimising the amount of time per frame that their upscaler required. They had a choice between NPU and GPU hardware for this, and ended up going with the GPU.The actual implementation is quite interesting, as Sony discovered that even processing a single layer of a 4K 16-channel image at 128MB was limited by memory bandwidth while using only three percent of the circa 300 TOPS available. The nave solution was to take a smaller portion of the image through the chip at once, but then you end up with problems where the edges lack necessary information about the surrounding tiles, so that data needs to be discarded. In the end, Sony opted to combine their vector registers in the WGPs, giving them a total of 15MB of memory and 200TB/s of memory bandwidth. It's a similar approach to how AMD handled RT, where you're still using generalised hardware to accomplish a specific goal. The repurposing is likely area-efficient in terms of the overall silicon footprint, doesn't require massive changes to RDNA, and seems to have allowed Sony to reach its speed goals for PSSR. However, PSSR isn't yet a "fully-fused" convolutional neural network (CNN), something that Intel notably achieved with their first release of XeSS. Being fully-fused imparts a speed advantage, as you're not touching system memory partway through upscaling a single frame. Based on DLSS taking less than 1ms and PSSR taking around 2ms through our rough calculations, it means that there's the potential for games to run faster if this is achieved in the future. It could also open the door to upscaling being used at higher frame-rates (eg 120fps) where a circa 2ms upscale runtime is a significant percentage of the 8.3ms available for an entire frame to be rendered. There is the opportunity that AMD could take a similar approach with RDNA 4, making modifications to the main CUs to make it possible to run convergent neural networks locally on the GPU. Sony's PSSR upscaler is first generation in nature and the quality of implementations can vary significantly - but at its best, like here in Stellar Blade, the improvement to image quality is phenomenal.Watch on YouTubeThe future: Amethyst, ML exploration and next-genSony has also announced a collaboration with AMD called Amethyst - itself a repurposed AMD GPU codename from 2014, with its purple colour coming from the combination of Sony (the Blue team) and AMD (the Red team). The idea is to make hardware architectures that work well for lightweight CNNs useful for real-time game graphics, as well as high-quality CNNs for game graphics. There'll also be collaboration on the network architectures of those CNNs. Both parties will be able to access all of these architectures for their products. It sounds like AMD is leading the way on the main GPU designs but Sony and AMD have this machine learning collaboration that should hopefully push things forward for both companies in terms of machine learning and ray tracing. Sony gets the benefit of iterating upon PSSR on a larger scale, AMD gets to minimise the R&D gap between itself and Nvidia. It's not clear whether there will be some cross-pollination between PSSR and FSR on RDNA 4 GPUs, and it'll be interesting to see where Microsoft's upscaling efforts also fall given that they also have a PC focus, yet compete against PlayStation with the Xbox.This isn't just about upscaling either, it's about computer graphics in general. There's plenty of machine learning potential that Mark Cerny seemed quite excited by in our conversation, including denoising, improving texture quality and texture streaming, maybe even geometric quality, all within the limited bandwidth and memory space available on consoles. That's the sort of thing that Sony should be evaluating for PS6 and an endeavour like Amethyst ensures that achieving some of this is doable on that kind of a time-frame. Likewise, announcing a partnership of this nature suggests that Sony is sticking with AMD for their next-gen console, as its major benefits won't be available in the next couple of years. As well as the PlayStation 6, there are plenty of exciting possibilities for the PS5 Pro as developers get to grips with the new consoles capabilities. There's certainly potential for more advanced RT implementations as well as improved iterations of PSSR that accomplish more uniformly good results. There's also the possibility for more improvements to running games under back-compat if Sony wants to use ML to enhance the existing library of games. Overall, it's been fascinating to learn more about the PS5 Pro, and we encourage you to read our interview with Mark Cerny and Mike Fitzgerald for more detail on the PS5 Pro, its development and potential for future improvement.

Sihoo Doro S300 review: A space-age office chairYes, it's expensive, but by jove is it comfortable. Review by Reece Bithrey Contributor Published on Dec. 18, 2024 The Sihoo Doro S300 has to be one of the most interesting, if futuristic, looking chairs Ive seen in a long time. Its been marketed by the Chinese brand as a zero gravity chair, possibly designed to make you feel as if youre floating in mid-air when in reality youre writing an important email.Its perhaps important to address that claim first. Of course, no chair is going to actually let you float in mid-air - it wouldnt be a chair then. But, the Doro S300 gets seriously close to making you feel that way. Theres more support in this chair than Ive ever experienced before, owing to the literal suspension that the Doro S300 has, combined with its myriad of adjustability and clever dual lumbar support. The feeling of relaxation and almost zen you get from using it is like plonking your backside down on a cloud, truth be told.Thats not an exaggeration, either. Ive been through my fair share of racing-seat style gaming chairs, and while the more premium choices such as the Secretlab Titan Evo have been comfortable, they dont come close to the Doro S300. Everything on this chair is adjustable, too, from the actual seat to the armrests, and back panels. Thats good in some instances, as you can configure the Doro S300 to your hearts content, although not so good in others. Even slightly readjusting myself after coming back to my desk caused the seat to move, while the armrests would not lock in place. Theyre brilliant for changing their angle or orientation, but wont stay in that position for too long. The armrests are quite enthusiastic to move.With regard to its adjustment, the Doro S300 offers up to 138 degrees of recline over three settings. For my use, I kept to the middle setting to offer the flexibility to go back without feeling as if I was about to fall out of the chair. Combined with this, theres those pesky 6D armrests that can go up and down vertically, from side to side, and even diagonally if you want. The backrest is split into two pieces, with a wider top piece for supporting your head and shoulders, while the bottom piece is spring-loaded and adjusts the strength of the lumbar support. The chairs seat is also suspended on springs, so cushions you well when you sit down initially.This is a high-back chair, supporting everything from your back to your arms especially well, and I dont rue the lack of a head-rest, as some may do. I very rarely made use of them in other chairs Ive owned, perhaps given my posture isnt the best, but the Doro S300 nonetheless felt especially comfortable even without one. Being a mesh chair also means its breathable and I didnt get too uncomfortable or sticky from using it for hours on end over the summer months when it gets particularly hot in our office. In all other settings, its been a joy to use. Yes, that is literal suspension so you feel like you're all floatin' and stuff.In addition, its supremely well-built with a mix of a thick metal base, a velvety mesh seat and fibreglass accoutrements that make it one of the best chairs Ive seen in terms of build quality, while in the white colourway I have here, it looks immensely stylish. Its also rather heavy, which makes it a bit unwieldy to build. Assembling the Doro S300 is undoubtedly a two-person job simply given how hefty it is, as you need one person to hold a piece in place while the other screws it in. All in, building it probably took about half an hour to 45 minutes, which is reasonably okay.Then theres the price. Theres no easy way of saying this - the Sihoo Doro S300 is an 680/$800 chair, making it one of the more expensive office chairs you can purchase, full stop. For reference, the Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 starts at $549, while the IKEA Markus is $290, and those have been two of our favourite gaming chairs for quite a while. With its spec sheet and the overall user experience here, its fairer to compare the Doro S300 to the likes of the Herman Miller Cosm ($1730) and the Steelcase Gesture ($1663), and in the context of those chairs, its a fair bit more affordable. The fabric mesh is comfortable and breathable.In essence, the Sihoo Doro S300 is a fantastic office chair thats certainly one of the most comfortable Ive used in years. That goes for everything from its breathable mesh material to its heaps of adjustment and its smooth recline. In addition, its especially well built and looks fantastic. It is an expensive chair, but definitely worth the investment.

Naoki Hamaguchi, the director of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, has asked PC players not to install any "offensive or inappropriate" mods once the game is released. Read more

The Horizon games on PS5 Pro feature some of the best upscaling technology we've seenHow does 'Guerrilla Super Resolution' stack up against PC's DLSS and FSR? Face-off by Alex Battaglia Video Producer, Digital Foundry Additional contributions byOliver Mackenzie, and Will JuddPublished on Dec. 17, 2024 Horizon Forbidden West has received a PS5 Pro patch and the game represents one of the best-looking and most interesting efforts we've seen on the new console. After all, developers Guerrilla Games are famous for their use of checkerboard rendering on PS4 and PS5, and they've now moved onto something new - but it's not PSSR, the upscaler introduced on PS5 Pro that has been used in so many other PS5 Pro enhanced games. Instead, it's its own solution - a kind of 'Guerilla Super Resolution', if you will, and it represents some of the cleanest reconstructed image quality we've seen on consoles. Just how good is it? We decided to find out.To refresh your memory, Horizon Forbidden West on PS5 includes performance and resolution modes, which have been combined into a performance pro mode for the new console. Since a patch in summer 2022, performance mode on base PS5 has run at a circa 1800p checkerboard with dynamic resolution scaling, trading a bit of image quality and stability for a 60fps update rate that makes the game much smoother to play. The new performance pro mode keeps that same 60fps but increases clarity substantially with an internal resolution of around 1440p. This mode boasts improved subpixel detail, better texture clarity and better anti-aliasing which is particularly noticeable on transparencies like foliage. Temporal stability is also improved, meaning the image suffers from fewer instances of artefacts or breakup. Finally, screen space reflections and depth-of-field effects are also noticeably improved, without the characteristic checkerboard pattern in SSR or shimmer in depth-of-field. Here's the full discussion between Alex and Oliver, covering how each Horizon Forbidden West mode looks and runs on PS5 Pro. Watch on YouTubeAll things combined, you can examine the image from only a few inches away without spotting any imperfections, save for some minor ghosting with foliage - it's impressive stuff. Of course, the PS5 already had a mode that boasted better image quality and stability - the resolution mode. This is limited to 30fps, of course, but how does it fare against the new performance pro mode? In short, the difference is minimised - but still exists. The old resolution mode, which was often a native 4K, is slightly sharper and has better screen-space reflections, but the performance pro mode still has its benefits in terms of image stability and anti-aliasing. There is also a resolution pro mode on the PS5 Pro, which offers the same native 4K and 30fps update rate as the old resolution mode, but with the new anti-aliasing method. This looks a touch sharper and has those better screen-space reflections, but the sacrifice of halving your frame-rate is ultimately too costly to really recommend - and as even Guerrilla's own tech director said to us at the PS5 Pro preview event, "friends don't let friends play at 30Hz". Happily, both performance pro and resolution pro run at an almost-perfect lock for their chosen frame-rates; we only managed to get the game to drop a single frame in an intense fight at 60fps, while the 30fps mode was 100 percent perfect outside of the usual frame drops on camera cuts we see in many games. You can also unlock the frame-rate in the performance pro mode by turning on 120Hz VRR support in the PS5 menus, which sees the game run into the 70s at points but also drop below 60fps on occasion. With VRR to smooth things out, you're taking fuller advantage of the power on offer with slighter higher internal resolutions or frame-rates, but it's not a huge change either way. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. The game also comes with a balanced pro mode if 120Hz is enabled, offering a 40fps update rate and settings between the resolution pro and performance pro modes. This mode feels a bit superfluous on the PS5 Pro, but provides another trade-off between fidelity and performance if you're interested. For most people though, the 60fps performance pro mode is the obvious recommendation. Given that Horizon Forbidden West has an excellent PC port with support for other upscalers, it seemed natural to compare Guerrilla's new method on PS5 Pro with Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR 3, using a similar 1440p to 4K upscale. This isn't the most challenging scenario for an upscaler - typically we see greater differences between different techniques when input resolutions are much lower - but it's still an interesting point of comparison for what Guerrilla has achieved. Based on side-by-side comparisons, it has managed to deliver something extremely similar to DLSS on PC, though the chances are that machine learning is not involved (such a solution already exists - PSSR - and we have doubts that Guerrilla would have trained its own neural network). Nvidia's solution handles particle trails better, but Guerrilla's better handles reflections in water, with smoother and less aliased results. The Guerrilla upscaler also fares marginally better in terms of motion, though the tiny amount of motion blur forced on in the PS5 version does confound the comparison somewhat. The FSR versus 'GSR' comparison is more heavily in favour of what Guerrilla has managed on PS5, with FSR tending to over-accumulate, leading to blurry grass when the camera is stationary and softer results in general - but still a perfectly acceptable resolve overall. It's an impressive result for the home-grown solution and its efficacy perhaps speaks to why Guerrilla opted against using Sony's PSSR for its PS5 Pro update. The studio said that it developed the technique for its own future titles, then backported it to Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Horizon Forbidden West, so it'll be fascinating to see whether it'll be deployed elsewhere - or even by other Sony internal studios - in the future.

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: A genuine disruptorCambridge Audio's first wireless noise cancelling cans are a hit. Review by Reece Bithrey Contributor Published on Dec. 17, 2024 I don't think there's much of a finer example of a 'heritage brand' than Cambridge Audio. Founded in 1968, they've been making fantastic audio kit including amps, record decks and headphones for such a long time, and as such, are a brand I've admired from afar. Their P100s are their first run at wireless, over-ear headphones with noise cancelling, which is as competitive of a market as it gets for audio.Allow me to explain a bit further - the state of play for wireless noise cancelling headphones in the 200 to 300 price range that Cambridge Audio has targeted has been taken up by the likes of Sony and Bose for several years, with other options from the likes of Sennheiser and Bowers and Wilkins sitting around, too. We have seen more specialist brands and models such as the Focal Bathys and the Mark Levinson No. 5909s enter the fray in recent years, although they've been priced way over what the status quo has been. What the P100s represent therefore is a bit of an anomaly - a specialist hifi brand making a set of more 'affordable' cans to truly take it to Bose and Sony alike.Things are certainly positive as soon as you take the P100s out of their black packaging with a lovely woven fabric hard case for transport that features a neat compartment for braided USB-C to USB-C and USB-C to 3.5mm cables. The case features a small indented Cambridge Audio logo, and little else stylistically. After all, it is just a case. Don't these look clean? Apart from the dust, obviously. With the cans themselves, they carry the same modern, clean lines as a lot of other Cambridge Audio kit does, which looks great. The main arms, yokes and outer portion of the earcups are all aluminium, while the plush earpads are memory foam and vegan leather. It's all very thoughtfully assembled, and helps to make the P100s wonderfully comfortable. A 330g weight isn't abnormal either, while their Goldilocks clamping force makes the P100s a pair of cans that you could wear all day without much trouble. I definitely had no issues in my weeks of use, for travel, or general listening.One small but lovely detail with these cans is the addition of proper, physical controls. For me, having tactile buttons I can click and use is miles better than the myriad of touch controls that the market has become awash with. The left hand earcup contains a power and Bluetooth pairing switch, as well as one for toggling between ANC being on, or off. The right earcup has volume controls, play/pause and skip forwards/backwards. There are voice prompts whenever the left hand buttons are pressed, and in the associated Melomania Connect app, you can change the language of said prompts, including to 'Southwark', which adds in the dulcet tones of Matt Berry. I didn't know I needed Douglas Reynholm telling me about ANC modes, but here we are, and the P100s are all the richer for it. In addition, there is also a proximity sensor inside the P100s that stops whatever you're listening to when you take them off - it's a small detail, but prevents the cans playing to themselves for too long.Connectivity is handled with bang-up-to-date Bluetooth 5.3 LE, and the P100s also support a lovely quantity of codecs. To be specific, it's the usual suspects of SBC, AAC and aptX Adaptive, although there's also aptX Lossless, too. Support for LDAC is absent, though. Pairing over Bluetooth to either my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra for some basic Spotify consumption or my FiiO M11S DAP for more critical listening was a doddle. They can also be used wired with the included USB-C to 3.5mm jack, although don't work passively, so you'll need to ensure there's enough juice before you enjoy some wired listening. I do love me some physical controls.Making sure there's enough go-juice inside the P100 is a doddle though, given their fantastic endurance. Without the fun of ANC, they're able to last for a remarkable 100 hours before conking out, while using noise cancellation means you'll be down to zero in 60 hours. With this in mind, that's still some of the best endurance I've seen on a set of wireless cans and takes it to options that cost a fair bit more.There is active noise cancellation, or ANC, on-board, and while it isn't class-leading in the way that Bose's is, it's more than serviceable for most people. The P100s are able to block out most of the noise from around you, while its transparency mode is pleasingly natural. It blocked out most of the horrible noise of the Northern line on a recent London trip, and their Bluetooth signal held up well as I made my way through St Pancras station. No matter how hard the P100s try though, they simply can't beat Bose, but then again, it seems like no one can.Sometimes it's quite hard to quantify how a pair of headphones sounds, as a lot of them have their own character and profile that can skew music one way or another. The first words that comes to mind with the P100s is 'inoffensive'. That's not say they aren't a fun, or engaging listen, because they absolutely are. It's rather to say that they work wonderfully with all sorts of music, and will certainly please generalist folks like myself. The earcups here are also plush, and deep.Everything from the gritty rock on Rush's Working Man to the deep groove on Earth, Wind & Fire's Let's Groove is presented cleanly. The bottom end on both tracks is prevalent, but not overpowering, and handled wonderfully. There is also a lot of breathing room lended to recordings, as I found when listening to the Bee Gees' Nights On Broadway. The track's clavichord and electric piano work was far off in the distance, but could still be heard with the utmost clarity alongside the excellent vocals and synth bass line.Nights On Broadway also demonstrated a top-end that lacked harshness, with its prominent cymbal work before Barry Gibb's mellow vocal on the bridge. The P100s handled it wonderfully, as they did the constant bell hits on Ralph MacDonald's Calypso Breakdown, which felt precise and crisp.The mid-range presentation that the P100 is slick, as demonstrated on tracks such as Never Known from Jack Johnson and Gordon Lightfoot's Rainy Day People. Vocals are handled with panache and come across with wonderful consistency. In addition, James Taylor's September Grass was presented with a wonderful warmth to his fingerstyle guitar and a smooth, clean vocal. It's just lovely. The headband distributes weight nicely.A great section of music I've often used for testing headphones is the 'Discovery' section of Rush's epic 20-minute 2112 suite, given its slow build from limited electric guitar parts with ambient water noise into intermittent vocals and even harder rock when moving into the 'Presentation' and 'Oracle: The Dream' sections. The P100s served up a result that was wide and well-balanced, with a robust low end, punchy drums and excellent vocals.This well-balanced audio also helps the P100s to be a decent set of headphones for gaming, especially with a soundstage of reasonable width helping for immersion in everything from Grand Theft Auto to CS2. There is also a low-latency gaming mode available, as selectable in the Melomania Connect app, although there is still some delay when compared against comparably priced top-class gaming headsets.The Cambridge Audio Melomania P100s make for quite an easy recommendation therefore if you're looking for a set of capable wireless noise cancelling cans with engaging audio, a comfortable fit, and versatile connectivity. They hit all the right notes in my eyes.

The paid, offline version of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a lot more chill, but the legacy of its freemium systems still requires a little navigation.The last time I wrote for Eurogamer, it was to tell the story of how Nintendo announced the end of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp as a freemium live service game and sent me into a tailspin of despair. The only thing helping me through this bleak time was the fact that, tucked at the very end of Nintendo's email, was the revelation that my save data could live on in a paid app - Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete - which would arrive in "the future".Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete reviewDeveloper: NintendoPublisher: NintendoPlatform: Played on iOSAvailability: Out now on iOS and AndroidWell, the future is NOW and I've been playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete since about three minutes after a pre-order download notification plopped onto my lock screen. Not continuously, I should say. I took a break to have a bath at some point, and another one to crochet a nudibranch and watch The Fly, but I did play pretty intensely. The wealth of knowledge and experience gleaned in this period is what I will now share with you. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete is a very similar experience to the now-defunct Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. You, a relatively competent human with a gigantic head, must contend with a collection of hapless but adorable animals and their requests as you build up a wealth of objects with which to decorate a little campsite, a camper van and a chalet. New players must start from scratch, gradually acquiring furniture and making friends in order to live out their deepest campsite manager fantasies. Old players can start fresh or pick up where they left off Well, they can if they linked their Pocket Camp save data to a Nintendo account. Left: Picking up yet another new terrain type for my future projects. Right: Regular readers will appreciate how momentous this is: Octavian is back at the campsite! Image credit: Eurogamer/NintendoThe latter is a potential point of friction, and worth discussing a little here in case you are a returning player reading this review and thinking of resurrecting your camp in the new app. Y'see, the save data transfer is only possible if you linked a Nintendo account to your save before the live service game was switched off.There were plenty of in-game warnings about account linking, and another warning in the Complete trailer. But there was no overlap period between the two apps being available, and thus no grace period where one could spot the new app, realise there was a linked account requirement for save data transfers, and rectify the problem in the moment. Rather, by the time Complete launched earlier this month, the availability (or not) of your save data was already set. This struck me as a strangely punishing way of handling the switchover timeline.Once you're in the game, the core loops are pure Animal Crossing. There's crafting! Decorating! Dressing up! Fetching a coconut for an implausibly sporty hamster! If you've imported save data, you'll also keep your player character level, your friendship levels with each animal character, your bells (the non-premium currency), crafting materials, items, layouts, clothing, and saved outfits. Left: I wonder why I crafted two flans? Right: The random drop gods do not wish me to have a luggage carousel, for some reason. Image credit: Eurogamer/NintendoWhat you won't find in Pocket Camp Complete are Leaf Tickets (the premium currency) or paid subscription plans. Ditching Leaf Tickets means no more microtransactions (hooray!), and the best features of the subscription plans have actually been integrated into Complete so everyone can access them, including the option of appointing a camp caretaker animal, the journal sticker system, and the provision of extra layout and outfit slots. There is also a new currency called Leaf Tokens, which is definitely not the same thing as Leaf Tickets under a different name (it is). Leaf Tokens live in the same place where Leaf Tickets used to be onscreen, but unlike its premium namesake, they're now very easy to earn simply by playing the game. They can be spent on a lot of the same things that Leaf Tickets were for, too, such as the golden fishing rod, terrain options, fortune cookies and more. I think I might be slightly drunk on Leaf Tokens, to be honest with you. I've accumulated so many in such a short space of time!In fact, after seven long years of scrimping and saving Tickets for campsite terrain options, I'd become used to not being able to justify the expense of acquiring a complete themed set because you had to purchase the themed foreground, middle ground, background and sky separately. Now, with this influx of Leaf Tokens, I'll admit that I went on what can only be described as a geological shopping spree my camp can contain oceans! Jungles! Bamboo forests! Cobblestones! Truly, I never knew such exhilaration until now. Left: The perfect armchair for one of my springtime room designs. Right: Derwin is so cute! I'm glad I promoted him to camp caretaker. Image credit: Eurogamer/NintendoCrafting times still apply, however, which came as something of a shock after throwing 3/month into the Nintendo abyss to reduce these times as part of the old Happy Helper Plan. I'd been paying that fee for so long that I'd forgotten that crafting time restrictions even existed, though my abundance of Leaf Tokens did help with this somewhat, as I can bung the crafting llama a wodge of them and he can shave six hours off the crafting of all future objects. Not that it's all that obvious, mind, as you have to poke the plus sign over the llama's head in order to do so and not the more logical thing of interacting with the crafting object slots themselves. The UI can be truly obtuse sometimes. One day, I will review you and your music, Slider. Just you wait. | Image credit: Eurogamer/NintendoThe other big change is that Complete does not require a constant internet connection while you're playing. This is great news for those of us who want to while away hours on train journeys by creating little camp tableaux. In fact, I spent an hour curled up in a coffee shop with appalling phone signal just tinkering with my current pre-Christmas cabin layout - a feat that would have been nigh on impossible in the original Pocket Camp.The only downside to offline play is losing the (admittedly very limited) social side of the Pocket Camp experience. I was sorry to see that go, as my little collection of friends had found ways to express genuine affection through Pocket Camp's restrictive interactions. Friends are now accumulated via QR codes on customisable Friend Cards and you can bump into their avatars in the new Whistle Pass area. Whistle Pass is where the Animal Crossing universe's only musician, KK Slider hangs out. (I have opinions about KK Slider, but I suppose I am not here to review him. Yet.)In terms of content, new events and cookies are scheduled until September 2025, and past events will repeat on a four-year cycle. I've played the first two events, and they were a lot easier to "finish" (by which I mean "obtain all the items of furniture") than those in the live service game. That's excellent for new players, but old hands might be wrongfooted by the new rhythms.I internalised the three-hour check-in cycle you need to optimise playing the live service game years ago. As a result, I've overshot the fishing target by such a long way that I'm now drowning in the Toy Day bookshelves which are offered as one of the event rewards. I just threw seven of them into one of the game's overflow storage warehouses just so I didn't have to look at them anymore.The above will tell you that I played Pocket Camp in such a deeply ridiculous way that it necessarily affects how I play and experience Complete. But, trying to put myself in the mind of a chill and normal player, I think Pocket Camp Complete offers an adorable, snackable game of collecting and creating. The food items are a particular delight, and I defy anyone not to melt when they find the coffee and cake item where the latte foam art is designed to look like Marshal's lovely little face! Look at the latte foam art of Marshal's little face! | Image credit: Eurogamer/NintendoThe removal of the Leaf Ticket economy also means you can probably get most of the items you want by popping in now and again, then settle in for a longer session where you arrange your new treasures for maximum effect.On the rougher side, the UI remains incredibly busy. Even I still have little points of confusion and we've established how much time I spend on this thing. There are fussy systems which no longer make sense without the accompanying freemium social shenanigans. For example, because of the way three types of fruit were distributed to incentivise market box usage in Pocket Camp, the only way I can obtain grapes in Complete is to pester the avatars of particular friends in Whistle Pass. Plus, I defy anyone to enjoy the clunky furniture overflow storage options in the late game.I also want to point out that, even though the microtransactions are gone, the vestiges of the freemium model are still embedded throughout. This means that, despite not making constant overtures towards your bank account, Complete can still imitate some of the same loops of predatory gaming, just with Tokens instead of Tickets, so parents (and games critics with a weakness for loot boxes) might want to bear that in mind.For existing Pocket Camp players with linked accounts, Complete offers a way to keep playing, as well as a way to preserve the defunct game's save data in an accessible format (at least until upkeep by the developer falls out of sync with mobile operating systems or store requirements). The way the new content will give way to a cycle of repeating old events also acts as a wind-down period something far gentler than just switching off the servers and that feels important for long-term players.So far, Complete has been a continuation of what I was doing for seven years in the live service game, but with a readjustment period. I don't want to say that I miss the pressure that the freemium systems exerted - it was unhealthy to my brain and wallet. However, using my existing playstyle with Complete's more forgiving cadence creates a looser and less sticky experience. I'm glad I have my save, but I won't be surprised if the game starts to slip out of my routine. Left: Everything about my Friend Card is deeply serious. Right: The treasure map/owl service is one of many weird things which I didn't have room to explain. Image credit: Eurogamer/NintendoAnimal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete accessibility optionsBeyond your phone's general accessibility options, you can only toggle the music and sound effects on/off as separate options. Overall, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete now feels like a closer experience to its console counterparts. There's the familiar roster of cute animals, squillions of items of furniture to craft and place, and you only have to pay once to gain access to the whole kaboodle. At time of writing, Complete costs 9/$10, which is an introductory offer for the first two months of release. That's a great price for the amount of diorama building and tinkering it provides, so the bigger question is how you feel about unlocking the cute furniture and outfits via freemium-style play. If you hate that method, no amount of cute latte art will make it worthwhile.At the end of January, that price goes up to 18/$20. That's a harder sell, especially in the mobile game ecosystem, but it could still keep the right person entertained. The main thing to note, though, is that after September 2025, there will be no new content, and Complete will enter a similar state to Animal Crossing: New Horizons - perfectly playable as long as the platforms it lives on support it.Eurogamer sourced its own copy of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete for the purpose of this review.

Catly developer denies using generative AI or blockchain technology in its open-world cat game"We are very surprised by such speculations."Image credit: SuperAuthenti News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on Dec. 17, 2024 The developer of Catly, an open-world cat game revealed at last week's The Game Awards, has denied using generative AI for the game's trailer, or the game itself.The game is set for release across Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Apple Watch and its trailer features a series of hyper-realistic cats that quickly raised eyebrows as viewers suspected generative AI was used.Since the reveal, reddit users noted various oddities and supposed indicators of AI art used on the game's website, some of which have reportedly been removed. Moreover, commenters suggested the developer has links to blockchain gaming and NFTs, which it has now denied.Catly - Official Reveal Trailer | The Game Awards 2024Watch on YouTubeA statement from a PR representative for Catly's developer SuperAuthenti, shared with IGN and Game Developer, said generative AI had not been used for the trailer or the game. "In fact we are very surprised by such speculations," the statement reads. "We do not think there are any existing AI tools that can produce a video like that. Industry experts have echoed this opinion."Both outlets were shown in-progress shots of the trailer from The Game Awards, which seemed to confirm the trailer was not AI-generated.A co-founder of SuperAuthenti is Kevin Yeung, who also co-founded TenthPlanet - a studio reportedly working on two blockchain games. One of these is Alien Mews, a digital cat life simulation built in Unreal Engine 5 that on the surface shares similarities with Catly. Reddit users have also pointed to a previous game published by SuperAuthenti called Plantly: Mindful Gardening that's since been scrubbed from the internet but appears to have used blockchain technology.Catly's Steam page also includes a testimonial quote from League of Legends and Arcane producer Thomas Vu, a known web3 investor.Another quote is from Ben Brode, game director of Hearthstone, who responded on BlueSky to say he'd seen 20 minutes of gameplay footage and "thought it looked cool so they asked me for a quote", adding "it looks real enough to me, cats looked wild". Catly on an Apple Watch | Image credit: SuperAuthentiAs Game Developer reported, SuperAuthenti did not comment on any business connections, but stated "Catly is not a blockchain game" and "there are no NFTs". The statement continued: "Our company/project has never issued any blockchain currency and any NFTs. Our company does not and has never owned any blockchain currency and NFTs."SuperAuthenti also confirmed to IGN Catly has been developed in Unreal Engine 5, with "various software" used to produce hyperrealistic hair and fur.What's certainly clear is the prevalence of AI in the games industry makes it hard to ascertain what's AI generated and what's hand-crafted.AI is changing video game development forever, as its use is becoming widespread across animation, scriptwriting, voice acting and more.Most recently, Google detailed its Genie 2 tool it claims can create playable 3D worlds from a single image prompt. It stressed the tool is for "rapid prototyping".

Beware: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film spoilers are running wildDon't disappoint Shadow.Image credit: Paramount Pictures News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on Dec. 16, 2024 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is out in cinemas later this week, but supposed spoilers of its post credits scene are already being posted online.The end of the previous film featured Shadow in a scene after the credits, setting up the story for this third film.Many fans are therefore eagerly awaiting this film's equivalent scene to see who might be coming next. This is your warning, then, to mute any necessary keywords and watch out on social media.Sonic the Hedgehog 3 | Official Trailer 2 (2024 Movie) Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, Keanu ReevesWatch on YouTubeThe UK premiere for the film took place last week, alongside various early viewing screenings. As such, recorded footage has now found its way online - we won't link to it here.Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will release worldwide on 20th December, so it's not long until the post credits scene has been widely viewed. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.The film features Shadow the Hedgehog, voiced by Keanu Reeves, and fans have spotted plenty of Sonic Adventure 2 references in its trailers so far.The latest trailer even includes a Chao Garden reference, and Shadow with a gun.Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will conclude the Year of Shadow, following the recent release of Sonic x Shadow Generations.

Beneath A Steel Sky at 30: how Terry Gilliam's Brazil and a week in Wales sowed the seeds of this classic adventure game"We wanted it to be different."Image credit: Eurogamer/Revolution Software Interview by Graeme Mason Contributor Published on Dec. 16, 2024 Founded in 1989, Yorkshire-based Revolution Software hit the ground running with Lure of the Temptress, an advanced 3D point-and-click adventure that utilised Revolution's own Virtual Theatre engine. "We were reaching the end [on Lure of the Temptress], and it was the most intense time, testing and checking it," remembers Charles Cecil, co-founder of Revolution alongside Tony Warriner, Noirin Carmody and David Sykes. "And the problem was, as a one-team, one-project company, we were having to start the next one at the same time." Hence the development detox for Warriner and Cummins, despatched to a remote Cecil family cottage in North Wales. When the pair returned, they had a 12-page design for Revolution's next game. "I said, 'Look, just go off to Wales for a week and come back with a complete design'," grins Cecil, acknowledging the enormity of this simple sentence.So, how did the creative process work? "I don't know," laughs Warriner. "It was one of those creative zones, where things sort of flow, where you don't really know how you've done it or how you got into that mode." Before Warriner and Cummins set off for Wales, several ideas for Revolution's next game had percolated around the office: a prime influence was Terry Gilliam's 1985 film Brazil, and that it should be set in Australia. "So we had that design, that concept of Australia and the cities in the desert," Warriner continues. "But it was like, what is the game going to be?" The eventual game, sketched out in North Wales, would become one of the most revered point-and-click games of all time. The famous beginning a tale and a half awaits Robert Foster and the player. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Revolution SoftwareIn Beneath a Steel Sky, the player is Robert Foster, an orphan raised by a tribe of Aboriginals in an area known as 'The Gap', a wilderness between towering megacities. When security officers arrive from Union City and cause havoc, Foster is taken back to the city. After giving his guards the slip, he stands on a steel walkway, ready to explore the dystopian city and uncover the innate corruption and exploitation at the heart of this seemingly advanced society.With Charles Cecil directing, Beneath a Steel Sky - known as Underworld at this point - went ahead into production, using an improved and updated version of Lure's Virtual Theatre engine. However, in terms of player interactivity and UI, the most significant change was Revolution's shift away from the traditional point-and-click trend of clicking on listed phrases or commands. "I think quite early on there was a famous meeting with a producer at Virgin called Simon Jeffrey," remembers Warriner. "And, to his credit, he said, 'Get rid of all that shit. Just have the left and right clicks'. And we were like, 'You're right!'" Instead of selecting the correct action from a list of verbs and commands, the player simply mouse-clicks to bring up the commands. Operating this lift is an early puzzle. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Revolution Software"With those listed choices, what you're doing is wasting the player's time because only one or two of them will work," notes Cecil. "By offering just two actions - interact and look - we reduced the number of permutations enormously. But then we attracted criticism about the game being too easy. That's sort of the price you have to pay." The interface, refined further for Revolutions next hit, Broken Sword, is today a template for the point-and-click genre. Beneath a Steel Sky's iconic packaging. | Image credit: Graeme MasonFor Steel Sky's story and visual tones, Revolution was keen to move away from the light-hearted approach of the genre's leader, LucasArts. "I mean, Monkey Island was a great game," explains Warriner, "but we thought the humour was too much. So we always tried to have a dark, gritty and believable central theme, putting our own dry humour on top of that." Cecil nods in agreement. "We wanted to have much more credible puzzles that people could work out because they were true to the context, character motivation and environment at that time. We wanted it to be different."Steel Sky's stunning visuals were also a world away from LucasArts' bright and vibrant games, inspired as they were by Brazil and, consequently, the book that inspired the Gilliam movie, which was George Orwell's 1984. An essential facet here was artist Dave Gibbons, with whom Cecil had worked while at Activision as the publisher attempted to develop a video game version of the alt-superhero graphic novel Watchmen. Cecil takes up the story: "Dave was quite clear that he didn't actually own the rights [to Watchmen]; I think DC owned them, but I can't remember why it never moved forward. It was a shame because it could have been a good licence." The scene of a dramatic event early in Steel Sky. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Revolution SoftwareThe work was not wasted, however, with Cecil remembering Gibbons when it came to Beneath a Steel Sky. "Dave had a very good name, and it felt like there was an opportunity to not only have him endorse the game, but also contribute. We shipped him an Amiga because he was so excited to start designing characters in DPaint." Ultimately, Gibbons would also design many of Steel Sky's emotive backdrops and the game's overall design. Plus, of course, the comic bundled within the game's large black box. "I think the Australia setting may have come from Dave," ponders Cecil, "with the richest and most privileged living high up where the air is cleaner." Revolution even tried to hoodwink the player away from Australia, using London-esque names such as St James (a real underground station in Sydney). "The whole Australia thing was meant to be played down - but then Dave drew kangaroos in the comic book, which kinda gave it away!" laughs Warriner. The Commodore Amiga game came on a whopping 15 disks. | Image credit: Graeme MasonAs Beneath a Steel Sky grew, Warriner and Sykes continued development on the Amiga, porting their work across to PC. "By today's standards, it was not a big piece of programming," says Warriner. "It would take me two weeks to recreate that engine today, with modern platforms, libraries and so on." Les Pace and Steve Ince helped bring Gibbons's pictures to the screen; James Long joined Warriner and Sykes on coding duties; Steve Oades led animation; and Tony Williams and Dave Cummins wrote the script and composed the game's futuristic music, with the latter also evolving Steel Sky's futuristic storyline. "It was quite a small team," says Warriner, "and everyone was quite talented at their own particular thing, although we were all very different types of people, so bickering was inevitable." Working from Revolution's offices in Hull, the team lived and breathed Steel Sky, the developers and their game flooding over into the pubs and bars on weekends. "It was seven days a week, late nights, and a lot of pressure," Warriner remembers. "And no money. But there was a lot of creative stuff going on."In sharp contrast to many video games now (and in the 90s), there were no spreadsheets, focus groups, or publisher intervention. "Steel Sky was just hacked out," smiles Cecil. "It was just like, let's make this game and every day, it would inch further to completion. It ended up being so much more than the sum of its parts. It's a game with soul." As Cecil further reveals, Revolution's strong relationship with publisher Virgin helped immensely, and it was severely tested towards the end of Steel Sky's development. "Virgin were very supportive, and yes, we did keep running out of money. But it found creative ways to fund it a little more." Robots are a key part of Beneath a Steel Sky. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Revolution SoftwareOne of these methods was to commission an Amiga CD32 version of Beneath a Steel Sky, adding voices to the existing game. At this point, Cecil recounts a tale of recalcitrant Shakespearean actors, overly fond of lunchtime drinking and, err, other recreational activities that adjusted their accents from morning to afternoon. "We kind of struggled through this, and it was absolutely dire," laughs Cecil. "And in the end, we were saved by Konami. It had licensed the game for the US and said, 'We're terribly sorry, we can't understand a word these people are saying!'" The situation allowed Revolution to jettison what it had already recorded and start again from scratch.Released early in 1994 on the Commodore Amiga and later on PC, Beneath a Steel Sky was met with universal praise. "As we'd done with Lure, we really innovated and came up with new ideas," says Cecil. "People seemed to forgive weaknesses if you did that, because things were changing so fast. Back then, we had no direct relationship with our audience; we sold the game to the publisher, who sold it to the retailers, who sold it to the public. We just had to wait with bated breath fortunately, the reception was fantastic, putting us on an absolute high." Dave Gibbons' comic was included with Steel Sky, and semi-adapted for the game'sintro sequence. | Image credit: Graeme MasonSteel Sky's subsequent sales forged Revolution's relationship with Virgin, inciting a three-game deal with the publisher, paving the way for the incredible success of the Broken Sword series. "[Beneath a Steel Sky] was a pivotal game for Revolution," muses Cecil. "The scholars of adventure gaming recognise it for its design changes, and for many, it's a seminal game. And, you know, one of the great privileges of writing adventure games is the people who say that these games changed their lives in the same way as a good film or book. But in many ways, an adventure game can be even more powerful, and it's a huge compliment when we hear from people who say they were profoundly affected by Beneath a Steel Sky."Today, Beneath a Steel Sky is rightly recognised as a defining game in its genre, its legacy detailed further in Tony Warriner's excellent book, Revolution: The Quest for Game Development Greatness. "Part of the reason I wrote that book was to try and understand how we did it," he explains, "to try and get a grip on that feeling and maybe reproduce it somehow. Because it was difficult. And it was highly pressured. But creatively, it was terrific."

Black Myth: Wukong producer on The Game Awards top prize snub: "I came all the way here for nothing!"Still won two awards.Image credit: Game Science News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on Dec. 16, 2024 Black Myth: Wukong producer and Game Science CEO Feng Ji has posted a lengthy statement following the action game's apparent snub for the top prize at this year's The Game Awards."The games nominated this year were all exceptional, but honestly, I still can't figure out what the criteria were for Game of the Year. I feel like I came all the way here for nothing!" he wrote in a post on Weibo (translated on reddit).Black Myth: Wukong did come away with the Best Action Game and Players' Voice awards, so he didn't leave empty handed.Black Myth: Wukong - Confront DestinyWatch on YouTube"Since last night, I've seen a lot of strong dissatisfaction and frustration in players' comments - often expressed humorously or ironically, which made me laugh," the producer continued."I completely understand these feelings and share the frustration, because behind these emotions lies not pain or malice, but dignity and confidence."Feng Ji even admitted he wrote his Game of the Year acceptance speech two years ago, "only to never get the chance to deliver it".It's unclear how joking he has been in his statement, especially considering the machine translation, but some have read it as rather salty. Eurogamer has contacted Game Science for further comment.The producer continued to express his confidence in the game and his hopes the success of Black Myth Wukong is the beginning of a new wave of high-quality, engaging games from Chinese developers.Former Sony Santa Monica writer Alanah Pearce shared in a stream she witnessed a person from the Game Science team crying in the audience when the game didn't win. "It clearly meant a lot to them, they did an amazing thing, but I did find that surprising," said Pearce.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Black Myth: Wukong lost out to Astro Bot for the Game of the Year award, which also won Best Game Direction, Best Action/Adventure Game, and Best Family Game. Balatro and Metaphor: ReFantazio also came away with multiple awards.An update for Black Myth: Wukong released last week ahead of the awards, finally bringing a much-requested map, as well as a boss rush challenge mode.Its Xbox release is still unknown.

Hideki Kamiya's "artistic spirit would die" had he stayed at Platinum GamesPlus the meaning behind new Okami studio Clovers.Image credit: Clovers News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on Dec. 16, 2024 Hideki Kamiya has stated if he'd continued working for Platinum Games his "artistic spirit [would] die".The former Platinum vice-president has launched a new studio with another former Platinum employee, Kaneto Koyama, as discussed in a new interview with Japanese outlet denfaminicogamer.The pair have set up Clovers, which will develop a sequel to the much-loved Okami, originally developed by Kamiya at Clover Studio.Okami sequel - Project Teaser TrailerWatch on YouTube"This is purely my personal opinion, but I thought, 'If I continue working here, my artistic spirit will die'," said Kamiya on his reasons for leaving Platinum last year (via machine translation)."I can understand the way PlatinumGames is as a company and its logic, and I was in the position of vice president myself, but as an individual named Hideki Kamiya, I was unable to embrace that way of thinking."As vice president, Kamiya was "field-first" at Platinum Games - he described himself as the muscle and CEO Atsushi Inaba as the brains."The signals sent from the cerebrum are essential for muscles," Kamiya continued. "At the same time, those signals must be reliable for muscles. Until then, I had received those signals, trusted them, and worked to maximize my own strength...but with regards to the future direction of Platinum with Inaba at the helm, I was no longer able to place my trust in them and exert my strength as a muscle."Kamiya has been quite vocal about his decision to leave Platinum Games, previously stating there were issues of "trust".He then launched a YouTube channel where he discussed his next project. "I already have a clear idea in mind," he said. "I would like to translate this vision in my head into a full proposal as soon as I am able to do so. And of course, I also have an idea of what I can do to make the project a reality. But if you ask me specifically what kind of game it will be, all I can say at this stage is, 'It'll be a Hideki Kamiya game'."It's unclear if that project is the new Okami sequel, announced as in-development at this year's The Game Awards last week. Teaser artwork for the Okami sequel | Image credit: CloversIn this new interview, Kamiya and Koyama explained the Clovers name of the new studio. It's been interpreted as "C lovers", with four Cs relating to the four leaves of a clover.Only three Cs are set in stone though: challenge, creativity, and craftsmanship. The fourth C is for employees to decide upon themselves.In a previous interview, Kamiya stated Okami's sales were a "huge failure" and that had the game been more successful Clover Studio probably would have continued.Little is known about the new Okami game, beyond the above teaser image.

Finally, an awards show gives Silent Hill 2 Remake and other horror games the love they deserveSilent Hill 2 Remake, Mouthwashing, and Still Wakes the Deep clean up at the Horror Game Awards.Image credit: Bloober Team News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 15, 2024 Silent Hill 2 Remake may have been robbed of the awards it was nominated for at The Game Awards, but it took home the top Game of the Year prize at the 2024 Horror Game Awards last night.Konami's horror game also won Best Survival Horror, Best Soundtrack, and awarded James Sunderland mocap and voice actor, Luke Roberts, Best Performance in the third annual horror game showcase, but did lose out in several other categories it was nominated for given the glut of brilliant horror games we've seen this year.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. What Was Life Like in Silent Hill 2 Before Its Downfall?Watch on YouTubeBest Indie Developer went to Chilla's Art, Best Multiplayer went to the brilliant Lethal Company, and the Chinese Room's Still Wakes the Deep took home Best Indie Horror, as well as Best Technical Achievement. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Pyramid Head designer Masahiro Ito also secured an individual lifetime achievement award.Here's the full list of nominations and winners:Best PerformanceAlec Newman/Caz - Caz in Still Wakes the DeepLuke Roberts/James Sunderland - Silent Hill 2 (WINNER)Vito Z. Holmes/Rambley the Raccoon - Indigo Park: Chapter 1Most Accessible Horror GameDead By Daylight - Behaviour InteractiveMouthwashing - Wrong OrganSlay the Princess The Pristine Cut - Black Tabby Games (WINNER)Best NarrativeSilent Hill 2 - Bloober TeamMouthwashing -- Wrong Organ (WINNER)Slay the Princess - The Pristine Cut -- Black Tabby GamesBest SoundtrackIndigo Park: Chapter 1 - UniqueGeesePsychopomp GOLD - Fading ClubSilent Hill 2 - Bloober Team SA (WINNER)Players ChoiceMouthwashing - Wrong Organ (WINNER)Silent Hill 2 - Bloober Team SABuckshot Roulette - Mike KlubnikaBest Survival HorrorCrow Country - SFB GamesSilent Hill 2 - Bloober Team (WINNER)Until Dawn - Ballistic MoonBest Indie DeveloperChillas Art (WINNER)Puppet ComboWrong OrganBest Indie Horror GameBuckshot Roulette - Mike KlubnikaMouthwashing - Wrong OrganStill Wakes the Deep - The Chinese Room (WINNER)Best Multiplayer Horror GameDead By Daylight - Behaviour Interactive Inc.Lethal Company - Zeekerss (WINNER)Phasmophobia - Kinetic GamesBest VR HorrorFive Nights at Freddys: Help Wanted 2 - Steel Wool StudiosPhasmophobia - Kinetic GamesResident Evil 4 VR - Capcom & Armature Studio (WINNER)Best DeveloperCapcom (WINNER)Wrong OrganPuppet ComboHorror Content Creator of the YearIGPManlyBadassHeroMarkiplier (WINNER)Technical AchievementMouthwashing - Wrong OrganStill Wakes the Deep - The Chinese Room (WINNER)Silent Hill 2 - Bloober Team SALifetime Achievement AwardMasahiro Ito (WINNER)Scott CawthonSam LakeMost Anticipated Horror GameAlien: Isolation Sequel - Creative Assembly (WINNER)Little Nightmares III - Supermassive GamesResident Evil 9 - CapcomHorror Game of the YearSilent Hill 2 - Bloober Team SA (WINNER)Mouthwashing - Wrong OrganStill Wakes the Deep - The Chinese RoomThe awards also showcased several world first premieres of upcoming indie horror games, including Shiver, Cold Abyss: Directors Cut, Deadcam, Feed the Pit, Bye Sweet Carole, and Animal Use Protocol."Against the odds, Bloober Team has delivered a remake that both expands Silent Hill 2 in just the right places, and gives careful attention to what it preserves," I wrote in Eurogamer Silent Hill 2 Remake review, awarding the game an impressive five out of five stars.In related news, Silent Hill 2 Remake players are still waiting for a fix for the game's poor performance on PS5 Pro.Although Bloober Team deployed an update to address graphical glitches affecting the horror game on PS5 Pro after Silent Hill 2 Remake players called on Konami to address the technical issues still plaguing the game on PS5 Pro weeks on from the Pro's release, all the patch has done is remove PSSR and fails to address any of the underlying issues.

Yes, The Witcher 4's Ciri has been recast"We believe she truly brought Ciri to life in a way that is both faithful to the character and exciting for fans."Image credit: CD Projekt News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 15, 2024 Yes, the rumours are true - CD Projekt Red has indeed recast The Witcher 4's Ciri.Whilst originally it only sounded as though the character's original actor, Jo Wyatt, had been replaced in Witcher 4's reveal trailer, the development studio has now confirmed it.The Witcher IV Cinematic Reveal Trailer | The Game Awards 2024.Watch on YouTube"Ciara Berkeley was cast as Ciri for The Witcher 4 cinematic reveal trailer," the studio said in a statement to TheGamer."Ciara is a talented actress who impressed us with her enthusiasm and vocal acting skills, and in this trailer we believe she truly brought Ciri to life in a way that is both faithful to the character and exciting for fans of the series."The studio did not expand on why Berkeley had been brought in to replace Wyatt, but did confirm to press that Berkeley wasn't only brought in for the trailer, but will portray Ciri in the full game, too.No, your ears were not deceiving you about Geralt, either. That was definitely Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle popping up at the end of the Witcher 4's reveal trailer, and yes, the white-haired monster hunter will absolutely feature in some way in the upcoming game.While many had assumed as much - let's be honest, it is hard to miss the gravelling tones of Cockle's Geralt - developer CD Projekt has now officially confirmed what we all thought.

Elder Scrolls Online developer votes to unionise"Unions work to benefit us all."Image credit: Zenimax Online Studios News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 13, 2024 Workers at ZeniMax Online Studios have voted to unionise.The ZOS United-CWA union, as part of the Communications Workers of America, has been recognised by parent company, Microsoft, "signalling a significant victory for workers' rights in the industry".To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Is Sony buying FromSoftware's parent company the next big games industry acquisition?Watch on YouTubeThe union said that together, workers will be able to collectively push for "real improvements to the workplace", including "job security amid record layoffs, protections against AI, better pay, and benefits".461 members have joined, including web developers, designers, engineers, and graphic artists.The decision to unionise comes after hundreds of staff at ZeniMax went on strike last month in protest at parent company Microsoft outsourcing work without bargaining with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union.Today we, a majority of video game workers at ZeniMax Online Studios and the workers behind ESO, are proud to announce the launch of our union with@cwaunion.bsky.social! [image or embed] ZOS United-CWA (@zosunited.bsky.social) December 13, 2024 at 12:24 AMTo see this content please enable targeting cookies."I'm excited to finally see workers have a say in the workplace. Other employers have made a choice to undermine and attack workers who want to collectively improve their working conditions," said ZOS United-CWA member Billy Eichner."However, with a union at ZeniMax, we can build a community where we have each other's backs. We already work together to make great games. Why not work together to make a great workplace?""Today, I'm intensely proud of my coworkers at ZeniMax Online Studios who are joining thousands of video game workers exercising their power to bring more stability to the industry," added member John Hartzell. "Regardless of your studio, your title, or where you're from, unions work to benefit us all."After months of industrial action, SAG-AFTRA - the US actors' union - recently signed an agreement with AI service Ethovox in a continued bid to safeguard performers.

Greedfall 2's improvements will come "gradually" with Update 0.2 "only the first step""We wish we could provide a release date, but we would rather wait until we're certain." News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 14, 2024 Greedfall 2 developer Spiders is taking the end of the year as an opportunity to "reflect on our journey so far" and said it is "committed to building a great game alongside [the community] and listening to your invaluable feedback".In an update posted to Steam, Spiders said "a lot has happened since the start of Early Access", but the team is "thrilled" about progress to date, despite it being a challenging experience that has seen Update 0.2 delayed with still no firm release date.An overview of the early access release of GreedFall 2.Watch on YouTube"[The decision to delay Update 0.2] allows us to focus on implementing significant improvements and fixes based on your feedback," the team said. "These include the combat system - which is as important to you as it is to us - the UI, character customisation, optimisation, and many other aspects."This means Update 0.2 will not introduce a slew of changes, but instead the improvements will be "implemented gradually" over time."We wish we could provide a release date, but we would rather wait until we're certain," the team added. "What we can promise is that our priority remains delivering a game that meets your expectations and takes your feedback into account."The update also explained that Spiders was working behind the scenes to address issues with Alivda's voice lines, and whilst the original voice actor was unable to reprise the role, it was working with a new artist to get the lines re-recorded and switched in "the next update"."Ensuring your voices shape this journey has always been the goal of Early Access," the update concluded.Shortly after Greedfall 2 released in early access on Steam, the Greedfall team said the early access launch had been "exciting", but acknowledged improvements were needed, including improving the drop rate, adjusting AI behaviours, and making dialogue scenes "less blurry".

The future of Lego Fortnite: "I hope it will never be done""We said 'let's plan for something in 2027' and they did it in one year."Image credit: Epic Games News by Tom Phillips Editor-in-Chief Published on Dec. 13, 2024 This week has seen a flurry of activity within Lego Fortnite, the game's ever-expanding corner in which several major game modes now sit. First, there was the arrival of a major update for Lego Fortnite Odyssey (the mode previously also simply known as 'Lego Fortnite') that adds the Storm King boss as a big endgame challenge, akin to the Ender Dragon in Minecraft. On top of that, there's now a whole new and separate Lego Fortnite offering to explore: Brick Life, a colourful mash-up of gameplay that feels like a family friendly GTA Online mixed with The Sims.How did these changes and new features come about? And what does the future have in store for Lego and Fortnite's popular crossover? I sat down with Epic Games EVP of game development Devin Winterbottom and Remi Marcelli, SVP and head of Lego gaming at the Lego group, to find out more. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Lego Fortnite Odyssey: Storm Chasers update trailer.Watch on YouTubeHow did you come up with the new name for Lego Fortnite Odyssey? And why Odyssey?Marcelli: Finding new brands is always a bit of a challenge for The Lego Group. Lego Fortnite is those two brands coming together, but it's not specific to a genre. At the time we chose that name, it was an obvious one just because we have two very powerful brands - it would have been a missed oppurtunity! We didn't know we would have a collection of games, potentially, that would sit under that umbrella. So what we really needed to find was one calling out the genre you'd expect to find when launching [the old] Lego Fortnite. Odyssey came about because that's what players love the most - the adventures. The adventure play is the most loved part of that game and we've dialled up that with the Storm King. We wanted to just make sure people understood it was an adventure game. And with Brick Life, hopefully it's self-explanatory - it says social roleplay.Did you always know you wanted the Storm King in there? For long-term Fortnite fans, it's cool to see him come over from the game's original Save the World mode.Winterbottom: We had a vision of what this game could become. We always wanted to have the big, scary, difficult, challenging thing you could aspire to accomplish. We always had in mind it would be something like this. "Everything we've added into Odyssey has stayed in it"We arrived together at the Storm King after thinking about the kinds of things that already existed within the big thing called Fortnite and the history of where our game came from, and what we could do in this world. He is meant to be the challenging thing you aspire to do, which a game in this genre - we think it needs. It's really cool the way that mountain has just appeared in the middle of your island, the biome is incredible and he sits atop of it. It's a lot of fun and we expect players will play with it for years to come. The last thing I'll say is - everything we've added into Odyssey has stayed in it. The Star Wars content is still there, the klombos, the battle bus, the vehicles, the farming... and that's unique for us. It was challenging to drop this Storm King update in the middle of a live map that someone's been playing and that we've added all this other content. But we're really happy with how it's turned out.How have you managed to do that? Because that new area isn't just stitched onto the side, it has to detect where you've been in the world previously, what you've built to avoid ruining that stuff."We can't betray that - their work, their investment"Winterbottom: It's difficult technical work. Unreal Engine is an incredibly powerful tool that has a bunch of procedural world generation technology we've been building into it for the past few years. We've been working on this technology challenge for a while. When we did the Star Wars update we put a new biome off to the side of your island, which is a much simpler thing to do. We always had the ambition to change a person's island live, but noting that they've changed it themselves - they've erected structures all over, they've built things. We can't betray that - their work, their investment. So there's a bunch of work the engineering and design teams did to figure out how to procedurally, algorithmically find the right place for that biome and create that structure. We're really proud of that achievement, it's not easy to do, and we take players' investment in everything they have crafted on that island very seriously - because that's their game they've built inside of it, it's their creativity and we don't want to tear that down. That's how we approached it.What will 2025 look like for Lego Fortnite Odyssey? Can players expect the same mix of licensed and original content additions?Winterbottom: We just met up and talked about exactly this! We like to have enough roadmap that we can get our teams working, but not so much that we can't react to what players are liking, because we take so much from the community in terms of feedback. There will definitely be, maybe, some more licensed stuff - there's fun things to do there. But we're more focused on how we continue to make the game fun. We've not just been adding content but we've been refining how it plays this year - and we plan to do both of those things next year with Odyssey. We're pretty excited about our 2025 plans.It sounds like a game you're not expecting to finish up anytime soon. Will it ever be finished, or are you planning to keep building it indefinitely?Marcelli: I hope it's a game that will never be finished. The Fortnite platform allows it and it's becoming a place where any game can be a live-service game pretty easily. And we talk about the limitless possibility of Lego bricks, so if you combine those things together it is indeed limitless. I hope it will never be done, always kept fresh and updated.Moving onto Lego Fortnite Brick Life, how did that come about and how did you decide on the roleplay, social sim genre to go with?Marcelli: Roleplay was a genre the community had a lot of appetite for and if you think about the Lego Group - the first thing you do once you've built your set is to roleplay, so it made a lot of sense to embrace that genre from a video game perspective. Doing this within Odyssey wouldn't have done justice to what you can get from an adventure game and would probably have been a distraction in an adventure game - so we wanted to separate the two. Epic came with the proposal of launching another game instead of creating everything that everyone wants in one game, in order to keep the authenticity of what Lego Odyssey was at the time. We said 'let's plan for something in 2027' and they did it in one year.Lego Fortnite Brick Life launch trailer.Watch on YouTubeHow did you do it in one year?"We're a little bit demanding with our brands and our bricks!"Marcelli: The technical work that went into building Lego Fortnite in the first place was long and deep. We just needed to have all our elements rendered to perfection because, as you can imagine, we're a little bit demanding with our brands and our bricks! [laughs]Winterbottom: Have you noticed the word Lego is literally embossed on every brick?!Marcelli: We wanted that Lego love, fidelity and everything. So it was a lot of work to create the archtecture, create 2000 minifigs, but once that's there it's easier to build on. So I want to commend the work Epic Games did in the past to build that architecture there in the past for us to build on in the future - but they also work fast, too.

Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island review - a repetitive if inoffensive offering of the godsMythbusting.Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn Games Review by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 13, 2024 A gentle cadence and quirky characters can't counter Mythwrecked's repetitiveness, making this more Greek tragedy than odyssey.As I drag on another hoodie and fight the urge to put on the heating, the soft sands and sun-bleached stones of Ambrosia Island are undeniably appealing. So, too, is Mythwrecked's promise of a wholesome, frictionless adventure - as we haul ourselves towards 2024's finishing line, I can't imagine anything more delightful than losing a few hours exploring a lush, tropical island.Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island reviewDeveloper: Polygon TreehousePublisher: Whitehorn GamesPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X/S and Xbox OneIf you go in with that mindset, knowing that Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is an uncomplicated, unhurried game that unfolds gently over ten-ish hours, then I don't suppose there's much to be offended by. You're Alex, a young woman shipwrecked on an island paradise where a gaggle of Greek gods are dealing with collective memory loss and friendship fallouts. Your job is to jog the former and foster the latter by scouring the island for lost mementoes to help your new pals remember who they are and why they loved each other in the first place.The gods, reskinned in contemporary personas that will delight and irk in equal measure, are initially wary but open up as you converse and do favours for them, as well as uncover clues about their lives before you got there. Every potential pal is unlocked in precisely the same way (chat, do favours, get mementoes, chat more, do more favours, get more mementoes), which means that from as early as a half-hour in, you're done - Mythwrecked won't have any more surprises for you.Watch on YouTubeAnd look, I get it. Maybe this is exactly what you're looking for. Maybe you're a little burnt out on the AAA grind and are seeking a game that's gentle and predictable in precisely this way. Maybe you love the back-and-forth of fetch quests and treasure hunts across the petite Ambrosia. All of this is true of me, too, but ultimately, there's a fine line between predictable and boring, and Mythwrecked sadly falls just on the wrong side of it for me.As pretty as it is, the world of Ambrosia is curiously forgettable. You're either stomping along the sand or stamping across non-descript grey stone, and although each god has their unique style and personality represented in their immediate surroundings, the world around them embodies little of it. This means no beach feels particularly different from the next, and no part of the citadel looks distinct either. Your journey from point A to B will inevitably be frustrated by a Greek pot that, to my chagrin, we cannot break, or be blocked entirely by the weird placement of a barrel or a dead-end. For the home of gods, it's all surprisingly pedestrian, tricky to traverse, and well, dull. Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn GamesThere is a fast-travel system, though. Kinda. While you can't instantly zip back and forth between places at a whim, there are nine magical doors across the island which will always transport you back to the shrine in the middle of the map near your home - a trick that Polygon Treehouse's debut game Roki pulled off to great effect when used in a point and click puzzle context. Your home itself is quite pointless as a space, mind, and I never bothered with it after I realised I couldn't do anything there but sleep. But I do appreciate the return of these magic doors, though, especially when I'm trying to find a god or complete a favour at a particular time of day.That's right - there's a dynamic day/night cycle. Some gods are only available to chat at certain times, and some favours can only be completed during set windows, too. Unlike Animal Crossing, though, you don't have to leave IRL and come back (or sneakily change the time on your device). Across the isle are about eleventy gazillion benches where you can sit and change the time to whatever you want which makes the whole cycle-thing a little redundant. Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn GamesThat's the problem here. While I appreciate these quality of life touches, they make much of Mythwrecked's mechanics unnecessary. You can also trade Ambrosia fruit, but just like the day/night cycle that can be overruled at almost any moment well, there's almost no point to it. Firstly, the fruit grows everywhere; all greedy gods need do is step outside and grab one, ffs. Nonetheless, the story requires you to gather it up and use it to barter with the gods for anything from keys to cassettes to plots of land where you can grow even more Ambrosia fruit. This could've been an interesting wrinkle, but there's so much of the stuff (check out the map image below - all those yellow dots are a fruit I've yet to collect!) I bought every item I could the moment they unlocked, and still didn't run out. And I finished the game with 350+ of the bloody things left over. Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn GamesCollecting mementoes and completing favours is strikingly simplistic, too. There's a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing - this is not a game that respects your time - and I did find the piecemeal way the chores were doled out irritating towards the end, as often you'll complete a set of favours in one area only to be sent back there five minutes later for something else. Trying to work out which hidden memento belongs to whom is neat, though - I never went to the Oracle for guidance; working it out for myself was much more rewarding, especially when Alex is on the hunt for several gods simultaneously. Chasing the proximity signals was a cool mini-puzzle feature, too - I never tired of that satisfying beep as you got nearer and nearer to your prize.The more you play, though, the less engaging it all feels. While Mythwrecked's cast is diverse, its world is not, with very little to make each area feel unique or worth exploring. The fixed camera that you're not allowed to manipulate is always getting in the way, too, sometimes creating unforced errors as you enter and exit shrine doorways. There are teeny steps Alex can't (read: won't) climb. Interactions with the gods are twee at best and cringey at worst, and even if you completely suspend reality, the relationships Alex rapidly forges with each individual god feel forced and saccharin rather than meaningful, not least because each character's vocal emote is grossly over-used. There's always a trickle of excitement as you collect enough seals to unlock a new area, but even that ends up being disappointing; the puzzles you complete to open the doors are uninspired to the point of insulting. Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn GamesMythwrecked: Ambrosia Island accessibility optionsYou can't tweak the difficulty, but as this is one of the simplest things you'll ever play, that doesn't really matter here. You can, however, switch sprint from hold to toggle, remove vibration and camera shake, and autoplay dialogue - well, text; there is no real dialogue - at your preferred speed. You can't change the size or font of your subtitles.There are so many ways a little tweak here or there could have elevated the adventure. The mosaics we uncover for Aphrodite - what if they were all different, perhaps telling their own stories? The string lights we power for Zeus and Hades - could they have been different colours, maybe revealing hitherto hidden secrets when lit? What if the ghosts heard things as they roamed the island at night? The Lighthouse we call home and spruce up with home decor both scavenged and saved for - couldn't we at least have been able to decorate our own home on our own? As it stands, the stuff you find is auto-magically added whether you want it or not. You cannot remove or reposition anything. You can't change the colours or add your own little touch. There's absolutely no agency here, yet so much squandered opportunity.If you've been looking for a simple, low-stress adventure to settle down with the kids this Christmas, then Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is as good a punt as any other, not least because it's entirely without swears, sex, or violence. Beyond that, though, with its overly simple puzzling, uninspired environments, and repetitive fetch quests, I'm sorry to say I'm not entirely sure who else Mythwrecked is for.A copy of Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island was provided for review by publisher Whitethorn Games.

Epic signs deal "to make Fortnite and Epic Games Store more accessible on millions of Android devices""Players will be able to easily download Fortnite, as well as third party games in the future."Image credit: Epic Games News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 14, 2024 Epic Games has signed a deal with European telecommunications company Telefnica to pre-install the Epic Games Store on all its new Android devices.This means that new Android Telefnica customers in Spain, Spanish-speaking Latam, Germany, and the UK will have access to Epic Games' suite of games right out of the box in a move to "make Fortnite and the Epic Games Store more accessible on millions of Telefnica Android devices".To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Lego Fortnite Odyssey: Storm Chasers update trailer.Watch on YouTube"Players will now be able to more easily download Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League Sideswipe as well as third party games in the future," Epic said. "This is just the beginning, and over the next year the companies plan to expand the partnership and bring more benefits to mobile players across the Telefnica network."Epic said this new "strategic alliance" will provide Android players with "a more competitive ecosystem [...] empowering them with a choice beyond the conventional app marketplaces". It follows Apple's decision back in August 2020 to boot Fortnite from the App Store after Epic deliberately circumvent contractually mandated App Store payment mechanisms within the game, kicking off Epic boss Tim Sweeney's public war with Apple in US courts."Thanks to our partnership with Telefnica, players will now be able to access the Epic Games Store, Fortnite and soon games from third party developers directly on their Android device," said Michael Modon, senior director of growth partnerships for Epic Games. "We look forward to expanding our collaboration with Telefnica to bring even more benefits to players."Earlier this week, Epic Games confirmed it would continue to support Fortnite Festival, the game's Rock Band-style mode developed by Harmonix, for the forseeable future.