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2025-05-31 22:52:42 ·

A Fungal Disease Ravaged North American Bats. Now, Researchers Found a Second Species That Suggests It Could Happen Again

A Fungal Disease Ravaged North American Bats. Now, Researchers Found a Second Species That Suggests It Could Happen Again
White-nose syndrome caused millions of bat deaths, and scientists are sounding the alarm that a second fungus could be disastrous if it reaches American wildlife

Lillian Ali

- Staff Contributor

May 30, 2025

A little brown batis seen with white fuzz on its nose, a characteristic of the deadly white-nose syndrome.
Ryan von Linden / New York Department of Environmental Conservation

In February 2006, a cave explorer near Albany, New York, took the first photograph of bats with a mysterious white growth on their faces. Later, biologists studying the mammals in caves and mines discovered piles of dead bats in the state—also with the fuzzy white mold.
The scientists were floored. For years, no one knew what was causing the mass die-offs from this “white-nose syndrome.” In early 2007, Albany residents called local authorities with reports of typically nocturnal bats flying in broad daylight.
“They were just dying on the landscape,” wildlife biologist Alan Hicks told the Associated Press’ Michael Hill in 2008. “They were crashing into snowbanks, crawling into woodpiles and dying.”
At last, scientists identified a culprit: The bats had succumbed to an infection caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans. Since its initial discovery, white-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats across 40 U.S. states and nine Canadian provinces, making it “the most dramatic wildlife mortality event that’s ever been documented from a pathogen,” DeeAnn Reeder, a disease ecologist at Bucknell University, tells the New York Times’ Carl Zimmer.
Now, nearly two decades later, scientists have developed some promising ways to fend off the disease, including an experimental vaccine. But a new study published this week in the journal Nature warns of a newly discovered second species of fungus that, if it reaches North America, could set all that progress back.
“We thought we knew our enemy, but we have now discovered it is twice the size and potentially more complex than we had imagined,” lead author Nicola Fischer, a biologist at the University of Greifswald in Germany, says in a statement.

Little brown bats are susceptible to white-nose syndrome in North America.

Krynak Tim, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The team analyzed 5,479 fungus samples collected by hundreds of citizen science volunteers across North America, Asia and Europe. They found that white-nose syndrome is caused by two distinct fungal species native to Europe and Asia, with only one species having reached North America so far. If the second species hits the continent, it could look like a “reboot” of the epidemic, Reeder tells the New York Times.
Study co-author Sébastien Puechmaille, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Montpellier in France, knew bats in Europe had also been seen with white fuzz on their noses, as he tells the New York Times. But those populations didn’t die off like American bats.
Charting the disease across Europe and Asia, he noticed that the fungus was able to live alongside those bats, while it ravaged American ones. In its native range, the fungus grows in the bodies of hibernating bats as their internal temperature drops, then it’s shed in the spring when they awaken. But in American bats, the fungus causes their immune systems to activate and burn fat reserves as they hibernate. The bats then wake up periodically, causing irregular activity and eventual starvation.
The researchers suggest the damaging fungal spores were first brought to North America by cavers that traveled from Europe—potentially western Ukraine—to the United States without completely disinfecting their boots or rope.
White-nose syndrome poses a threat not just to bats, but to whole ecosystems. Bats are vital parts of many food chains, eating insects and pollinating plants. However, they reproduce fairly slowly, only having one or two pups at a time. Rebuilding a bat population, then, could take decades.
And since cave ecosystems are similarly delicate, biologists are wary of trying to kill off the fungus preemptively.
“Cave ecosystems are so fragile that if you start pulling on this thread, what else are you going to unravel that may create bigger problems in the cave system?” said University of Wisconsin–Madison wildlife specialist David Drake to the Badger Herald’s Kiran Mistry in December.
The discovery also occurs as the original wave of white-nose syndrome continues to spread across North America, having just crossed the Continental Divide in Colorado.
Just one spore of the new species could be devastating to American bat colonies. Puechmaille tells the New York Times that policies should be put in place to make sure the second fungus does not spread to more continents, and that cavers should not move equipment between countries and should disinfect it regularly.
“This work … powerfully illustrates the profound impact a single translocation event can have on wildlife,” he adds in the statement.

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A Fungal Disease Ravaged North American Bats. Now, Researchers Found a Second Species That Suggests It Could Happen Again
A Fungal Disease Ravaged North American Bats. Now, Researchers Found a Second Species That Suggests It Could Happen Again White-nose syndrome caused millions of bat deaths, and scientists are sounding the alarm that a second fungus could be disastrous if it reaches American wildlife Lillian Ali - Staff Contributor May 30, 2025 A little brown batis seen with white fuzz on its nose, a characteristic of the deadly white-nose syndrome. Ryan von Linden / New York Department of Environmental Conservation In February 2006, a cave explorer near Albany, New York, took the first photograph of bats with a mysterious white growth on their faces. Later, biologists studying the mammals in caves and mines discovered piles of dead bats in the state—also with the fuzzy white mold. The scientists were floored. For years, no one knew what was causing the mass die-offs from this “white-nose syndrome.” In early 2007, Albany residents called local authorities with reports of typically nocturnal bats flying in broad daylight. “They were just dying on the landscape,” wildlife biologist Alan Hicks told the Associated Press’ Michael Hill in 2008. “They were crashing into snowbanks, crawling into woodpiles and dying.” At last, scientists identified a culprit: The bats had succumbed to an infection caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans. Since its initial discovery, white-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats across 40 U.S. states and nine Canadian provinces, making it “the most dramatic wildlife mortality event that’s ever been documented from a pathogen,” DeeAnn Reeder, a disease ecologist at Bucknell University, tells the New York Times’ Carl Zimmer. Now, nearly two decades later, scientists have developed some promising ways to fend off the disease, including an experimental vaccine. But a new study published this week in the journal Nature warns of a newly discovered second species of fungus that, if it reaches North America, could set all that progress back. “We thought we knew our enemy, but we have now discovered it is twice the size and potentially more complex than we had imagined,” lead author Nicola Fischer, a biologist at the University of Greifswald in Germany, says in a statement. Little brown bats are susceptible to white-nose syndrome in North America. Krynak Tim, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The team analyzed 5,479 fungus samples collected by hundreds of citizen science volunteers across North America, Asia and Europe. They found that white-nose syndrome is caused by two distinct fungal species native to Europe and Asia, with only one species having reached North America so far. If the second species hits the continent, it could look like a “reboot” of the epidemic, Reeder tells the New York Times. Study co-author Sébastien Puechmaille, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Montpellier in France, knew bats in Europe had also been seen with white fuzz on their noses, as he tells the New York Times. But those populations didn’t die off like American bats. Charting the disease across Europe and Asia, he noticed that the fungus was able to live alongside those bats, while it ravaged American ones. In its native range, the fungus grows in the bodies of hibernating bats as their internal temperature drops, then it’s shed in the spring when they awaken. But in American bats, the fungus causes their immune systems to activate and burn fat reserves as they hibernate. The bats then wake up periodically, causing irregular activity and eventual starvation. The researchers suggest the damaging fungal spores were first brought to North America by cavers that traveled from Europe—potentially western Ukraine—to the United States without completely disinfecting their boots or rope. White-nose syndrome poses a threat not just to bats, but to whole ecosystems. Bats are vital parts of many food chains, eating insects and pollinating plants. However, they reproduce fairly slowly, only having one or two pups at a time. Rebuilding a bat population, then, could take decades. And since cave ecosystems are similarly delicate, biologists are wary of trying to kill off the fungus preemptively. “Cave ecosystems are so fragile that if you start pulling on this thread, what else are you going to unravel that may create bigger problems in the cave system?” said University of Wisconsin–Madison wildlife specialist David Drake to the Badger Herald’s Kiran Mistry in December. The discovery also occurs as the original wave of white-nose syndrome continues to spread across North America, having just crossed the Continental Divide in Colorado. Just one spore of the new species could be devastating to American bat colonies. Puechmaille tells the New York Times that policies should be put in place to make sure the second fungus does not spread to more continents, and that cavers should not move equipment between countries and should disinfect it regularly. “This work … powerfully illustrates the profound impact a single translocation event can have on wildlife,” he adds in the statement. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. #fungal #disease #ravaged #north #american

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A Fungal Disease Ravaged North American Bats. Now, Researchers Found a Second Species That Suggests It Could Happen Again

A Fungal Disease Ravaged North American Bats. Now, Researchers Found a Second Species That Suggests It Could Happen Again White-nose syndrome caused millions of bat deaths, and scientists are sounding the alarm that a second fungus could be disastrous if it reaches American wildlife Lillian Ali - Staff Contributor May 30, 2025 A little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) is seen with white fuzz on its nose, a characteristic of the deadly white-nose syndrome. Ryan von Linden / New York Department of Environmental Conservation In February 2006, a cave explorer near Albany, New York, took the first photograph of bats with a mysterious white growth on their faces. Later, biologists studying the mammals in caves and mines discovered piles of dead bats in the state—also with the fuzzy white mold. The scientists were floored. For years, no one knew what was causing the mass die-offs from this “white-nose syndrome.” In early 2007, Albany residents called local authorities with reports of typically nocturnal bats flying in broad daylight. “They were just dying on the landscape,” wildlife biologist Alan Hicks told the Associated Press’ Michael Hill in 2008. “They were crashing into snowbanks, crawling into woodpiles and dying.” At last, scientists identified a culprit: The bats had succumbed to an infection caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans. Since its initial discovery, white-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats across 40 U.S. states and nine Canadian provinces, making it “the most dramatic wildlife mortality event that’s ever been documented from a pathogen,” DeeAnn Reeder, a disease ecologist at Bucknell University, tells the New York Times’ Carl Zimmer. Now, nearly two decades later, scientists have developed some promising ways to fend off the disease, including an experimental vaccine. But a new study published this week in the journal Nature warns of a newly discovered second species of fungus that, if it reaches North America, could set all that progress back. “We thought we knew our enemy, but we have now discovered it is twice the size and potentially more complex than we had imagined,” lead author Nicola Fischer, a biologist at the University of Greifswald in Germany, says in a statement. Little brown bats are susceptible to white-nose syndrome in North America. Krynak Tim, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The team analyzed 5,479 fungus samples collected by hundreds of citizen science volunteers across North America, Asia and Europe. They found that white-nose syndrome is caused by two distinct fungal species native to Europe and Asia, with only one species having reached North America so far. If the second species hits the continent, it could look like a “reboot” of the epidemic, Reeder tells the New York Times. Study co-author Sébastien Puechmaille, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Montpellier in France, knew bats in Europe had also been seen with white fuzz on their noses, as he tells the New York Times. But those populations didn’t die off like American bats. Charting the disease across Europe and Asia, he noticed that the fungus was able to live alongside those bats, while it ravaged American ones. In its native range, the fungus grows in the bodies of hibernating bats as their internal temperature drops, then it’s shed in the spring when they awaken. But in American bats, the fungus causes their immune systems to activate and burn fat reserves as they hibernate. The bats then wake up periodically, causing irregular activity and eventual starvation. The researchers suggest the damaging fungal spores were first brought to North America by cavers that traveled from Europe—potentially western Ukraine—to the United States without completely disinfecting their boots or rope. White-nose syndrome poses a threat not just to bats, but to whole ecosystems. Bats are vital parts of many food chains, eating insects and pollinating plants. However, they reproduce fairly slowly, only having one or two pups at a time. Rebuilding a bat population, then, could take decades. And since cave ecosystems are similarly delicate, biologists are wary of trying to kill off the fungus preemptively. “Cave ecosystems are so fragile that if you start pulling on this thread, what else are you going to unravel that may create bigger problems in the cave system?” said University of Wisconsin–Madison wildlife specialist David Drake to the Badger Herald’s Kiran Mistry in December. The discovery also occurs as the original wave of white-nose syndrome continues to spread across North America, having just crossed the Continental Divide in Colorado. Just one spore of the new species could be devastating to American bat colonies. Puechmaille tells the New York Times that policies should be put in place to make sure the second fungus does not spread to more continents, and that cavers should not move equipment between countries and should disinfect it regularly. “This work … powerfully illustrates the profound impact a single translocation event can have on wildlife,” he adds in the statement. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

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GameDev.net paylaşılan bir bağlantı

2025-05-31 10:04:25 ·

Web

Author

When you google something what is displayed isn’t the result of a real time crawling. When a google bot visits a website all the pages making the site tree get downloaded to the search engine server. The search engine server checks the downloaded site main page HTML code. If links are found the bot will check if they link to the main page server if they do those pages will get downloaded too. The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendlyStrict order is not required in the remaining sections of the site. Is this close?

Calin said:The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendlyStrict order is not required in the remaining sections of the site. Is this close?Formatting makes no difference at all. The HTML standards at w3.orgdefine the shape of a link, and in fact everything in everyhtml page at the world. The server has implementations that understand those standards, and can thus extract any link from anyhtml page.Besides valid html pages there are also many non-valid html pages. There are code libraries for such pages as well in an attempt to extract useful information from it anyway. One such implementation is BeautifulSoup for Python, although I never used it. No doubt there are others.

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Author

Ok I get it, it’s one thing what’s posible and something else what should be done.

What “should” be done varies, and what sites implement may exist in many different ways.Most modern web pages aren't simple HTML. They only have enough HTML to wrap the script tags to trigger JavaScript which is linked and loaded from a different page. The script infrastructure connects to server, runs a bunch of background requests, picks up the article or news story or content from the back end database, transmits a bunch of fingerprinting information to uniquely identify your broswer, loads a bunch of ads, and overall modifies the DOMthat is ultimately what's displayed. If you turn off all Javascript and try to load many sites like news sites, you'll either get a visibly blank page or nothing more than a header and footer. The actual body contains little more than a collection of div and anchor tags that the script modifies into a human-usable page.The reasons for doing it that way vary. Some are there because they're trying to turn the web page into a programmed application rather than flat content. Many are to get around the fact that caching proxies and corporate tools interfere with their metrics and the data needed for their advertising information. A few are used to detect bots, change how the website gets scraped by bots, or to mitigate automated attacks like DDOS attacks. Sites like Cloudflare wrap the entire web page up requiring scripts to run for any access at all.
Although URLs are theoretically free from time constraints, many systems generate them through data-driven means and the internal links used by the scripting systems are only valid for a short time. It's a way many sites like Facebook or Reddit or YouTube or TikTok keep their walled garden in place. Direct links to specific items keep working but the feed is algorithmic, always displaying whatever it is they want to push out to users uniquely. The main links can't be easily indexed, archived, or automated because they're constantly shifting around what the servers provide.

Calin said:The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendlyNo, nice formatting is done only by web devs for themselves, so they can read their code.A bot will ignore formatting and also visual style.It's maybe worth noting that most html code is actually generated from other code, and not manually written.For example php code on the server generates html code from a link, where the link contains parameters controling what the php script should do. E.g. a link with page number may look like ‘www.blah.com?p=15’. The php script may then also access a data base to get desired text and images for page 15, and generate the final html code for the client browser to display.Contrary, Javascript is not run on the server, but on the client browser. It can thus make a realtime webgame for example, or decorative animations, implementing a media player, etc. It can modify the html code, e.g. changing a number so the animation is displayed. It can also communicate with the server to implement things like a webshop and payment system.Both php and JS are extremely flexible compared to C++. You can do anything, e.g. adding a new member variable to a class instance at runtime. Totally nuts and horrible. : )
#web

Web
Author When you google something what is displayed isn’t the result of a real time crawling. When a google bot visits a website all the pages making the site tree get downloaded to the search engine server. The search engine server checks the downloaded site main page HTML code. If links are found the bot will check if they link to the main page server if they do those pages will get downloaded too. The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendlyStrict order is not required in the remaining sections of the site. Is this close? Calin said:The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendlyStrict order is not required in the remaining sections of the site. Is this close?Formatting makes no difference at all. The HTML standards at w3.orgdefine the shape of a link, and in fact everything in everyhtml page at the world. The server has implementations that understand those standards, and can thus extract any link from anyhtml page.Besides valid html pages there are also many non-valid html pages. There are code libraries for such pages as well in an attempt to extract useful information from it anyway. One such implementation is BeautifulSoup for Python, although I never used it. No doubt there are others. Advertisement Author Ok I get it, it’s one thing what’s posible and something else what should be done. What “should” be done varies, and what sites implement may exist in many different ways.Most modern web pages aren't simple HTML. They only have enough HTML to wrap the script tags to trigger JavaScript which is linked and loaded from a different page. The script infrastructure connects to server, runs a bunch of background requests, picks up the article or news story or content from the back end database, transmits a bunch of fingerprinting information to uniquely identify your broswer, loads a bunch of ads, and overall modifies the DOMthat is ultimately what's displayed. If you turn off all Javascript and try to load many sites like news sites, you'll either get a visibly blank page or nothing more than a header and footer. The actual body contains little more than a collection of div and anchor tags that the script modifies into a human-usable page.The reasons for doing it that way vary. Some are there because they're trying to turn the web page into a programmed application rather than flat content. Many are to get around the fact that caching proxies and corporate tools interfere with their metrics and the data needed for their advertising information. A few are used to detect bots, change how the website gets scraped by bots, or to mitigate automated attacks like DDOS attacks. Sites like Cloudflare wrap the entire web page up requiring scripts to run for any access at all. Although URLs are theoretically free from time constraints, many systems generate them through data-driven means and the internal links used by the scripting systems are only valid for a short time. It's a way many sites like Facebook or Reddit or YouTube or TikTok keep their walled garden in place. Direct links to specific items keep working but the feed is algorithmic, always displaying whatever it is they want to push out to users uniquely. The main links can't be easily indexed, archived, or automated because they're constantly shifting around what the servers provide. Calin said:The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendlyNo, nice formatting is done only by web devs for themselves, so they can read their code.A bot will ignore formatting and also visual style.It's maybe worth noting that most html code is actually generated from other code, and not manually written.For example php code on the server generates html code from a link, where the link contains parameters controling what the php script should do. E.g. a link with page number may look like ‘www.blah.com?p=15’. The php script may then also access a data base to get desired text and images for page 15, and generate the final html code for the client browser to display.Contrary, Javascript is not run on the server, but on the client browser. It can thus make a realtime webgame for example, or decorative animations, implementing a media player, etc. It can modify the html code, e.g. changing a number so the animation is displayed. It can also communicate with the server to implement things like a webshop and payment system.Both php and JS are extremely flexible compared to C++. You can do anything, e.g. adding a new member variable to a class instance at runtime. Totally nuts and horrible. : ) #web

GAMEDEV.NET

Web

Author When you google something what is displayed isn’t the result of a real time crawling. When a google bot visits a website all the pages making the site tree get downloaded to the search engine server. The search engine server checks the downloaded site main page HTML code. If links are found the bot will check if they link to the main page server if they do those pages will get downloaded too. The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendly ( the bot needs to find it’s way to those links) Strict order is not required in the remaining sections of the site. Is this close? Calin said:The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendly ( the bot needs to find it’s way to those links) Strict order is not required in the remaining sections of the site. Is this close?Formatting makes no difference at all. The HTML standards at w3.org ( https://www.w3.org/standards/ ) define the shape of a link, and in fact everything in every (valid) html page at the world. The server has implementations that understand those standards, and can thus extract any link from any (valid) html page.Besides valid html pages there are also many non-valid html pages (they sort-of look like html, but don't do everything that the standard says should be done). There are code libraries for such pages as well in an attempt to extract useful information from it anyway. One such implementation is BeautifulSoup for Python, although I never used it. No doubt there are others. Advertisement Author Ok I get it, it’s one thing what’s posible and something else what should be done. What “should” be done varies, and what sites implement may exist in many different ways.Most modern web pages aren't simple HTML. They only have enough HTML to wrap the script tags to trigger JavaScript which is linked and loaded from a different page. The script infrastructure connects to server, runs a bunch of background requests, picks up the article or news story or content from the back end database, transmits a bunch of fingerprinting information to uniquely identify your broswer, loads a bunch of ads, and overall modifies the DOM (Document Object Model) that is ultimately what's displayed. If you turn off all Javascript and try to load many sites like news sites, you'll either get a visibly blank page or nothing more than a header and footer. The actual body contains little more than a collection of div and anchor tags that the script modifies into a human-usable page.The reasons for doing it that way vary. Some are there because they're trying to turn the web page into a programmed application rather than flat content. Many are to get around the fact that caching proxies and corporate tools interfere with their metrics and the data needed for their advertising information. A few are used to detect bots, change how the website gets scraped by bots, or to mitigate automated attacks like DDOS attacks. Sites like Cloudflare wrap the entire web page up requiring scripts to run for any access at all. Although URLs are theoretically free from time constraints, many systems generate them through data-driven means and the internal links used by the scripting systems are only valid for a short time. It's a way many sites like Facebook or Reddit or YouTube or TikTok keep their walled garden in place. Direct links to specific items keep working but the feed is algorithmic, always displaying whatever it is they want to push out to users uniquely. The main links can't be easily indexed, archived, or automated because they're constantly shifting around what the servers provide. Calin said:The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendlyNo, nice formatting is done only by web devs for themselves, so they can read their code.A bot will ignore formatting and also visual style (css).It's maybe worth noting that most html code is actually generated from other code, and not manually written.For example php code on the server generates html code from a link, where the link contains parameters controling what the php script should do. E.g. a link with page number may look like ‘www.blah.com?p=15’. The php script may then also access a data base to get desired text and images for page 15, and generate the final html code for the client browser to display.Contrary, Javascript is not run on the server, but on the client browser. It can thus make a realtime webgame for example, or decorative animations, implementing a media player, etc. It can modify the html code, e.g. changing a number so the animation is displayed. It can also communicate with the server to implement things like a webshop and payment system.Both php and JS are extremely flexible compared to C++. You can do anything, e.g. adding a new member variable to a class instance at runtime. Totally nuts and horrible. : )

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Computerworld UK paylaşılan bir bağlantı

2025-05-31 09:17:45 ·

New Perplexity Labs platform launched for those ‘who want to bring an entire idea to life’

Perplexity this week released Perplexity Labs, a new tool for Pro users that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and visual representations, to meet users’ increased demand for AI productivity tools with greater autonomy and ever more sophisticated capabilities. The platform, a rival to Anthropic Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google Gemini, can even work on its own for 10 minutesas it reasons through complicated assignments.

“Labs underscores a broader shift toward multi-agent AI systems that plan, execute, and refine full workflows,” said Thomas Randall, research lead for AI at Info-Tech Research Group.

Designed to handle more complex assignments

Perplexity launched Perplexity Search, its proprietary search engine, in December 2022, just after ChatGPT dropped, and earlier this year released Deep Research, which scours the web, reads papers, reasons through materials, and creates comprehensive reports for users.

The company says that Perplexity Labs is like “having a team” that can bring projects from ideation to reality. The platform creates reports, spreadsheets, dashboards and simple web apps. It can perform at least 10 minutes of self-supervised work, uses web browsing, writes and executes code to handle tasks like organizing data or applying formulas, and can create charts and images.

“In some respects, this is a continuation of Perplexity’s original capabilities as an AI-driven search engine that provides deeper answers,” said Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights.

Indeed, Perplexity explained that Labs was designed to handle more complex assignments than Deep Research.

“While Deep Research remains the fastest way to obtain comprehensive answers to in-depth questions — typically within 3 or 4 minutes — Labs is designed to invest more timeand leverage additional tools, such as advanced file generation and mini-app creation,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post. “This expanded capability empowers you to develop a broader array of deliverables for your projects.”

With its longer research workflow, Perplexity Labs can generate spreadsheets, visual representations, and high-quality reports, the company said. It iteratively searches through hundreds of sources, reasons about that data, and refines its approach as it gets deeper into a project, similar to the way in which a human researcher might approach a new area of study.

To create interactive dashboards without the need for coding expertise or external development tools like Ploty and Dash, users just describe what they’re visualizing in natural language, and Labs will generate it in real-time. Dashboards could, for instance, visualize business finances or other complex datasets, incorporating clickable elements to allow non-technical users to quickly act on insights.

In one example from the blog, Perplexity prompted Labs from the position of a leader at a tech consulting firm looking to create a potential customer list. It specified that it wanted to partner with US B2B companies in seed, series A, or series B stages, and asked Labs to list 20 relevant companies and include key details including contact information.

Labs compiled a comprehensive dataset of potential customers, organizing them by stageand identified their core focus, intended customers, and funding to date. The platform cited links from Forbes, YCombinator, and Exploding Topics that it had used as sources. When further prompted, it crafted introductory emails to the CEOs of the series A startups.

To simplify workflows, Labs arranges generated files in a dedicated tab for easy access, supports integration with other tools such as Google Sheets, and allows users to pull out and format citations to bring credibility to its research. Finished materials can be exported as PDFs or documents, or converted into a shareable Perplexity Page.

Pro subscriberscan now work with Labs on Web, iOS, and Android; Mac and Windows apps are coming soon.

A good fit for enterprise users?

This new capability joins an increasingly competitive space, as users look for AI productivity tools that are ever-more performant and can handle more and more tasks autonomously.

Park pointed out that Perplexity Labs is a response to tools and models such as OpenAI o1-pro, Claude Opus 4, and Google’s recent Flow and Firebase announcements.

“There is a massive Hunger Games in the AI world right now,” said Park. “Every major vendor is ferociously trying to one-up each other in providing more functionality, either in a native model or with an agency of AI agents designed to work together and create digital assets such as documents, apps, and videos.”

However, Perplexity Labs does provide differentiation from other providers in the market, Info-Tech’s Randall noted. In particular, Perplexity is betting that users will prefer a “low-cost, open, tool-agnostic sandbox” for web crawling, code execution, and the creation of finished artifacts including mini web apps.

“These capabilities cannot yet be found in other enterprise platforms, such as Microsoft or Google offerings,” said Randall.

But enterprises should approach Perplexity Labs with a governance-first mindset, he emphasized. Assets live in Perplexity’s cloud and, for now, lack the private data grounding and compliance controls that CIOs expect, and that they find in tools such as Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini.

From an enterprise perspective, Park noted, the biggest challenge is that every asset-creating model and agent is “still opaque” when it comes to understanding the assumptions, training, and reliability of assumptions used to create a document or app. He compared it to the way the iPhone bypassed BlackBerry and Windows through “sheer consumer delight.”

“At some point, AI vendors seeking serious business usage will need to provide more transparency and governance tools to the business world, just as mobile device management and mobile security solutions eventually came to the iPhone,” said Park.

Otherwise, businesses may be compelled to build their own clunky but secure versions of Perplexity Labs, “which are guaranteed to be less accurate and useful justthe history of business apps trying to imitate viral consumer apps,” he said.
#new #perplexity #labs #platform #launched

New Perplexity Labs platform launched for those ‘who want to bring an entire idea to life’
Perplexity this week released Perplexity Labs, a new tool for Pro users that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and visual representations, to meet users’ increased demand for AI productivity tools with greater autonomy and ever more sophisticated capabilities. The platform, a rival to Anthropic Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google Gemini, can even work on its own for 10 minutesas it reasons through complicated assignments. “Labs underscores a broader shift toward multi-agent AI systems that plan, execute, and refine full workflows,” said Thomas Randall, research lead for AI at Info-Tech Research Group. Designed to handle more complex assignments Perplexity launched Perplexity Search, its proprietary search engine, in December 2022, just after ChatGPT dropped, and earlier this year released Deep Research, which scours the web, reads papers, reasons through materials, and creates comprehensive reports for users. The company says that Perplexity Labs is like “having a team” that can bring projects from ideation to reality. The platform creates reports, spreadsheets, dashboards and simple web apps. It can perform at least 10 minutes of self-supervised work, uses web browsing, writes and executes code to handle tasks like organizing data or applying formulas, and can create charts and images. “In some respects, this is a continuation of Perplexity’s original capabilities as an AI-driven search engine that provides deeper answers,” said Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights. Indeed, Perplexity explained that Labs was designed to handle more complex assignments than Deep Research. “While Deep Research remains the fastest way to obtain comprehensive answers to in-depth questions — typically within 3 or 4 minutes — Labs is designed to invest more timeand leverage additional tools, such as advanced file generation and mini-app creation,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post. “This expanded capability empowers you to develop a broader array of deliverables for your projects.” With its longer research workflow, Perplexity Labs can generate spreadsheets, visual representations, and high-quality reports, the company said. It iteratively searches through hundreds of sources, reasons about that data, and refines its approach as it gets deeper into a project, similar to the way in which a human researcher might approach a new area of study. To create interactive dashboards without the need for coding expertise or external development tools like Ploty and Dash, users just describe what they’re visualizing in natural language, and Labs will generate it in real-time. Dashboards could, for instance, visualize business finances or other complex datasets, incorporating clickable elements to allow non-technical users to quickly act on insights. In one example from the blog, Perplexity prompted Labs from the position of a leader at a tech consulting firm looking to create a potential customer list. It specified that it wanted to partner with US B2B companies in seed, series A, or series B stages, and asked Labs to list 20 relevant companies and include key details including contact information. Labs compiled a comprehensive dataset of potential customers, organizing them by stageand identified their core focus, intended customers, and funding to date. The platform cited links from Forbes, YCombinator, and Exploding Topics that it had used as sources. When further prompted, it crafted introductory emails to the CEOs of the series A startups. To simplify workflows, Labs arranges generated files in a dedicated tab for easy access, supports integration with other tools such as Google Sheets, and allows users to pull out and format citations to bring credibility to its research. Finished materials can be exported as PDFs or documents, or converted into a shareable Perplexity Page. Pro subscriberscan now work with Labs on Web, iOS, and Android; Mac and Windows apps are coming soon. A good fit for enterprise users? This new capability joins an increasingly competitive space, as users look for AI productivity tools that are ever-more performant and can handle more and more tasks autonomously. Park pointed out that Perplexity Labs is a response to tools and models such as OpenAI o1-pro, Claude Opus 4, and Google’s recent Flow and Firebase announcements. “There is a massive Hunger Games in the AI world right now,” said Park. “Every major vendor is ferociously trying to one-up each other in providing more functionality, either in a native model or with an agency of AI agents designed to work together and create digital assets such as documents, apps, and videos.” However, Perplexity Labs does provide differentiation from other providers in the market, Info-Tech’s Randall noted. In particular, Perplexity is betting that users will prefer a “low-cost, open, tool-agnostic sandbox” for web crawling, code execution, and the creation of finished artifacts including mini web apps. “These capabilities cannot yet be found in other enterprise platforms, such as Microsoft or Google offerings,” said Randall. But enterprises should approach Perplexity Labs with a governance-first mindset, he emphasized. Assets live in Perplexity’s cloud and, for now, lack the private data grounding and compliance controls that CIOs expect, and that they find in tools such as Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini. From an enterprise perspective, Park noted, the biggest challenge is that every asset-creating model and agent is “still opaque” when it comes to understanding the assumptions, training, and reliability of assumptions used to create a document or app. He compared it to the way the iPhone bypassed BlackBerry and Windows through “sheer consumer delight.” “At some point, AI vendors seeking serious business usage will need to provide more transparency and governance tools to the business world, just as mobile device management and mobile security solutions eventually came to the iPhone,” said Park. Otherwise, businesses may be compelled to build their own clunky but secure versions of Perplexity Labs, “which are guaranteed to be less accurate and useful justthe history of business apps trying to imitate viral consumer apps,” he said. #new #perplexity #labs #platform #launched

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New Perplexity Labs platform launched for those ‘who want to bring an entire idea to life’

Perplexity this week released Perplexity Labs, a new tool for Pro users that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and visual representations, to meet users’ increased demand for AI productivity tools with greater autonomy and ever more sophisticated capabilities. The platform, a rival to Anthropic Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google Gemini, can even work on its own for 10 minutes (or more) as it reasons through complicated assignments. “Labs underscores a broader shift toward multi-agent AI systems that plan, execute, and refine full workflows,” said Thomas Randall, research lead for AI at Info-Tech Research Group. Designed to handle more complex assignments Perplexity launched Perplexity Search, its proprietary search engine, in December 2022, just after ChatGPT dropped, and earlier this year released Deep Research (now to be rebranded as Research), which scours the web, reads papers, reasons through materials, and creates comprehensive reports for users. The company says that Perplexity Labs is like “having a team” that can bring projects from ideation to reality. The platform creates reports, spreadsheets, dashboards and simple web apps. It can perform at least 10 minutes of self-supervised work, uses web browsing, writes and executes code to handle tasks like organizing data or applying formulas, and can create charts and images. “In some respects, this is a continuation of Perplexity’s original capabilities as an AI-driven search engine that provides deeper answers,” said Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights. Indeed, Perplexity explained that Labs was designed to handle more complex assignments than Deep Research. “While Deep Research remains the fastest way to obtain comprehensive answers to in-depth questions — typically within 3 or 4 minutes — Labs is designed to invest more time (10 minutes or longer) and leverage additional tools, such as advanced file generation and mini-app creation,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post. “This expanded capability empowers you to develop a broader array of deliverables for your projects.” With its longer research workflow, Perplexity Labs can generate spreadsheets, visual representations, and high-quality reports, the company said. It iteratively searches through hundreds of sources, reasons about that data, and refines its approach as it gets deeper into a project, similar to the way in which a human researcher might approach a new area of study. To create interactive dashboards without the need for coding expertise or external development tools like Ploty and Dash, users just describe what they’re visualizing in natural language, and Labs will generate it in real-time. Dashboards could, for instance, visualize business finances or other complex datasets, incorporating clickable elements to allow non-technical users to quickly act on insights. In one example from the blog, Perplexity prompted Labs from the position of a leader at a tech consulting firm looking to create a potential customer list. It specified that it wanted to partner with US B2B companies in seed, series A, or series B stages, and asked Labs to list 20 relevant companies and include key details including contact information. Labs compiled a comprehensive dataset of potential customers, organizing them by stage (A, B, or seed) and identified their core focus, intended customers, and funding to date. The platform cited links from Forbes, YCombinator, and Exploding Topics that it had used as sources. When further prompted, it crafted introductory emails to the CEOs of the series A startups. To simplify workflows, Labs arranges generated files in a dedicated tab for easy access, supports integration with other tools such as Google Sheets, and allows users to pull out and format citations to bring credibility to its research. Finished materials can be exported as PDFs or documents, or converted into a shareable Perplexity Page. Pro subscribers ($20 a month) can now work with Labs on Web, iOS, and Android; Mac and Windows apps are coming soon. A good fit for enterprise users? This new capability joins an increasingly competitive space, as users look for AI productivity tools that are ever-more performant and can handle more and more tasks autonomously. Park pointed out that Perplexity Labs is a response to tools and models such as OpenAI o1-pro (launched in March), Claude Opus 4 (released in May), and Google’s recent Flow and Firebase announcements. “There is a massive Hunger Games in the AI world right now,” said Park. “Every major vendor is ferociously trying to one-up each other in providing more functionality, either in a native model or with an agency of AI agents designed to work together and create digital assets such as documents, apps, and videos.” However, Perplexity Labs does provide differentiation from other providers in the market, Info-Tech’s Randall noted. In particular, Perplexity is betting that users will prefer a “low-cost, open, tool-agnostic sandbox” for web crawling, code execution, and the creation of finished artifacts including mini web apps. “These capabilities cannot yet be found in other enterprise platforms, such as Microsoft or Google offerings,” said Randall. But enterprises should approach Perplexity Labs with a governance-first mindset, he emphasized. Assets live in Perplexity’s cloud and, for now, lack the private data grounding and compliance controls that CIOs expect, and that they find in tools such as Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini. From an enterprise perspective, Park noted, the biggest challenge is that every asset-creating model and agent is “still opaque” when it comes to understanding the assumptions, training, and reliability of assumptions used to create a document or app. He compared it to the way the iPhone bypassed BlackBerry and Windows through “sheer consumer delight.” “At some point, AI vendors seeking serious business usage will need to provide more transparency and governance tools to the business world, just as mobile device management and mobile security solutions eventually came to the iPhone,” said Park. Otherwise, businesses may be compelled to build their own clunky but secure versions of Perplexity Labs, “which are guaranteed to be less accurate and useful just [based on] the history of business apps trying to imitate viral consumer apps,” he said.

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2025-05-30 14:26:30 ·

Hell Is Us hands-on preview: ‘AAA games are so bloody bland’

Hell Is Us – not a Ubisoft adventureGameCentral goes hands-on with an original sci-fi action adventure where the emphasis is on unguided exploration, with some throwback Zelda inspirations.
You might already have heard the name Hell Is Us, as the game was first announced way back in April 2022. We previewed the sci-fi tinged adventure title, developed by Rogue Factor, for the first time last year but now it’s now on the home-straight, with a launch slated for September 4, and it’s shaping up to be a peculiar but intriguing mix of influences and ideas.
Our original preview covered the opening portion of the game, so we’ll avoid recycling the same beats here. But for the general gist, you play as a United Nations peacekeeper named Rémi who absconds to the war-torn country of Hadea to track down his parents. A stroll through the tutorial woods later, however, and you realise this isn’t your average civil war.
If you’re a fan of Alex Garland’s Annihilation, the strange, faceless alien from the film’s conclusion seems to have been a major influence here. The Hollow Walkers, as they’re called, are very creepy, as they lurch towards you unpredictably, with morphing limbs which give way to vivid, crystallised attacks or, in some cases, attached entities you have to kill first. Their glossy white exteriors act as a stark contrast to the muted eastern European landscapes and dungeons you explore.
As a game, Hell Is Us is somewhere between Bloodborne and The Elder Scrolls. Combat wise, it’s pulling from the former, as you manage a stamina bar, study enemy patterns for the best moment to strike, and rely on aggressive play to replenish a magic gauge for special skills. You also have access to a drone which has various uses tied to cooldown meters, between distracting enemies for crowd control andmaking a charging lunge to dash across the field.
Rogue Factor has stressed Hell Is Us isn’t a Soulslike though. You’re not scrambling for bonfires or any equivalent, but exploring and chatting with characters to piece together where you need to go next, discovering new places of interest, and encountering side objectives which bleed into the overall experience of navigating each semi-open world area. The ethos behind Hell Is Us is discovery and the organic feeling of finding your feet through clues in the world, rather than using obvious quest markers.
This might bring to mind acclaimed games like Elden Ring and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, in their attempt to declutter open world exploration, but the game’s director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, believes the roots of what Hell Is Us is aiming for goes much further back.

A cosmic horror vibe‘Honestly, something like Zelda: A Link To The Past is much closer to what we’re doing now than a Breath Of The Wild,’ said Jacques-Belletête. ‘Sometimes people are like: ‘I really can’t put my finger on what kind of game it is, what is it?’ It’s just a bloody adventure game man. Look, you’ve got a combat system, you’ve got enemies, you’ve got a world to explore, there’s a mystery, you’re not exactly sure of this and that, there’s some secrets, there’s some dungeons, we did a game like that. It’s called an adventure game,’ he laughs. ‘There were even side-quests in A Link To The Past that didn’t tell you they were side-quests.’
Hell Is Us might have roots in classic adventure games but Jacques-Belletête, is keen to highlight the fatigue around Ubisoft style open world bloat, where checklists and quest markers are traditionally used in abundance. With the success of Elden Ring, there’s a sense many players are craving a return to the hands-off approach, where you discover and navigate without guidance – something which Hell Is Us is hoping to capitalise on after being in development for five years.
‘It’s so much of the same thing,’ he says, when talking about Ubisoft style open worlds. ‘It loses all meaning. Things within these open worlds lose a lot of their taste because too much is like not enough. Do you know what I mean? You have to fill up these spaces with stuff and they just become a bit bland. Like once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen all of them.
‘It’s not Assassin’s Creed, it’s not that, it’s all these things. We’ve all played them. I’ve got hundreds of hours in Elder Scrolls, all the Elder Scrolls, and that’s not the point. It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just trends do their time and then you have other ideas. It’s a pendulum as well. Games used to be a lot more hardcore that way, we’re trying to go back to that.’
The crux of my time in Hell Is Us is spent in the Acasa Marshes, the second semi-open area where the game lets you off the leash. The swampy lands are crawling with Hollow Walkers in various forms, from hulking monstrosities to mage-like foes that hurl projectiles from clifftops. A swirling black vortex is a key focal point but it’s surrounded by enemies, while a settlement of villagers sits on a hill in the distance.
According to the developer, this area is one of the largest areas in the game, ‘if not the biggest one’, and it seems pretty expansive. We found ourselves heading towards the village, whose militaristic leader points you towards your main objective with only a vague mention of going ‘north east’. You have to dig out your compass to get a grasp on your position, as you try and navigate towards, and identify, the next location based on this information.
The lack of quest markers makes the experience more involving, as you have to pay more attention to your surroundings and what characters say, but I wasn’t entirely sold on the story or writing. It’s something which will hopefully become more engrossing as you get a better grasp of what’s going on, but I wish I was drawn to interact with the characters based on something beyond the need to progress.
When you are exploring aimlessly though, Hell Is Us offers some captivating chaos – even if some areas did appear to be gated off. We fought our way to the aforementioned swirling black vortex, encountering enemies beyond our skill level, only to find it was inaccessible due to not having a specific item. We later found an underground tunnel filled with enemies, where an individual connected to a side0quest was trapped at the other end.

Surprises lurk in the marshesAlong with these open areas, Hell Is Us also offers dungeons built around puzzles and combat encounters. Aside from the opening introduction, we were shown a later example in the Lymbic Forge, which offered a nice dose of visual variety, with flowery gardens surrounding the boggy marshes. We didn’t get a whole lot of time to explore, but it did highlight the breadth of the combat upgrades and customisation with late-game weapons.
Hell Is Us is a melting pot of influences, and while we’re not sold on everything it’s trying to accomplish, it’s certainly another AA game with big, exciting ambitions – a trend amplified this year by the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. For the game’s director, who has a long history in the AAA space working at Eidos Montreal, the jump to AA, with a smaller team and less financial pressure, means you have a better chance of striking gold.

More Trending

‘Look at what’s happened to the industry over the past few years,’ Jacques-Belletête said. ‘Everything is crumbling. The big ones are crumbling. It’s unsustainable. And the games are so bloody bland, man. Everything is starting to taste the same.
‘I find there’s nothing worse than starting a game and right away, in the first two minutes, you know how everything’s going to work. You know how every single mechanic is going to work. They might have a littlein how it’s going to feel, or this and that, the user interface will change a bit, but you’ve gone through the ropes a dozen times.
‘A game has to occupy a space in your brain that your brain can’t really compute just yet. When you turn your console off and it stays there, that’s because something is going on. Your brain is processing. And I think that’s a lot easier to do in the AA space than the AAA.’
Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PCPrice: £49.99Publisher: NaconDeveloper: Rogue FactorRelease Date: 4th September 2025Age Rating: 16

The combat itEmail gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
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For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

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Hell Is Us hands-on preview: ‘AAA games are so bloody bland’
Hell Is Us – not a Ubisoft adventureGameCentral goes hands-on with an original sci-fi action adventure where the emphasis is on unguided exploration, with some throwback Zelda inspirations. You might already have heard the name Hell Is Us, as the game was first announced way back in April 2022. We previewed the sci-fi tinged adventure title, developed by Rogue Factor, for the first time last year but now it’s now on the home-straight, with a launch slated for September 4, and it’s shaping up to be a peculiar but intriguing mix of influences and ideas. Our original preview covered the opening portion of the game, so we’ll avoid recycling the same beats here. But for the general gist, you play as a United Nations peacekeeper named Rémi who absconds to the war-torn country of Hadea to track down his parents. A stroll through the tutorial woods later, however, and you realise this isn’t your average civil war. If you’re a fan of Alex Garland’s Annihilation, the strange, faceless alien from the film’s conclusion seems to have been a major influence here. The Hollow Walkers, as they’re called, are very creepy, as they lurch towards you unpredictably, with morphing limbs which give way to vivid, crystallised attacks or, in some cases, attached entities you have to kill first. Their glossy white exteriors act as a stark contrast to the muted eastern European landscapes and dungeons you explore. As a game, Hell Is Us is somewhere between Bloodborne and The Elder Scrolls. Combat wise, it’s pulling from the former, as you manage a stamina bar, study enemy patterns for the best moment to strike, and rely on aggressive play to replenish a magic gauge for special skills. You also have access to a drone which has various uses tied to cooldown meters, between distracting enemies for crowd control andmaking a charging lunge to dash across the field. Rogue Factor has stressed Hell Is Us isn’t a Soulslike though. You’re not scrambling for bonfires or any equivalent, but exploring and chatting with characters to piece together where you need to go next, discovering new places of interest, and encountering side objectives which bleed into the overall experience of navigating each semi-open world area. The ethos behind Hell Is Us is discovery and the organic feeling of finding your feet through clues in the world, rather than using obvious quest markers. This might bring to mind acclaimed games like Elden Ring and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, in their attempt to declutter open world exploration, but the game’s director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, believes the roots of what Hell Is Us is aiming for goes much further back. A cosmic horror vibe‘Honestly, something like Zelda: A Link To The Past is much closer to what we’re doing now than a Breath Of The Wild,’ said Jacques-Belletête. ‘Sometimes people are like: ‘I really can’t put my finger on what kind of game it is, what is it?’ It’s just a bloody adventure game man. Look, you’ve got a combat system, you’ve got enemies, you’ve got a world to explore, there’s a mystery, you’re not exactly sure of this and that, there’s some secrets, there’s some dungeons, we did a game like that. It’s called an adventure game,’ he laughs. ‘There were even side-quests in A Link To The Past that didn’t tell you they were side-quests.’ Hell Is Us might have roots in classic adventure games but Jacques-Belletête, is keen to highlight the fatigue around Ubisoft style open world bloat, where checklists and quest markers are traditionally used in abundance. With the success of Elden Ring, there’s a sense many players are craving a return to the hands-off approach, where you discover and navigate without guidance – something which Hell Is Us is hoping to capitalise on after being in development for five years. ‘It’s so much of the same thing,’ he says, when talking about Ubisoft style open worlds. ‘It loses all meaning. Things within these open worlds lose a lot of their taste because too much is like not enough. Do you know what I mean? You have to fill up these spaces with stuff and they just become a bit bland. Like once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen all of them. ‘It’s not Assassin’s Creed, it’s not that, it’s all these things. We’ve all played them. I’ve got hundreds of hours in Elder Scrolls, all the Elder Scrolls, and that’s not the point. It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just trends do their time and then you have other ideas. It’s a pendulum as well. Games used to be a lot more hardcore that way, we’re trying to go back to that.’ The crux of my time in Hell Is Us is spent in the Acasa Marshes, the second semi-open area where the game lets you off the leash. The swampy lands are crawling with Hollow Walkers in various forms, from hulking monstrosities to mage-like foes that hurl projectiles from clifftops. A swirling black vortex is a key focal point but it’s surrounded by enemies, while a settlement of villagers sits on a hill in the distance. According to the developer, this area is one of the largest areas in the game, ‘if not the biggest one’, and it seems pretty expansive. We found ourselves heading towards the village, whose militaristic leader points you towards your main objective with only a vague mention of going ‘north east’. You have to dig out your compass to get a grasp on your position, as you try and navigate towards, and identify, the next location based on this information. The lack of quest markers makes the experience more involving, as you have to pay more attention to your surroundings and what characters say, but I wasn’t entirely sold on the story or writing. It’s something which will hopefully become more engrossing as you get a better grasp of what’s going on, but I wish I was drawn to interact with the characters based on something beyond the need to progress. When you are exploring aimlessly though, Hell Is Us offers some captivating chaos – even if some areas did appear to be gated off. We fought our way to the aforementioned swirling black vortex, encountering enemies beyond our skill level, only to find it was inaccessible due to not having a specific item. We later found an underground tunnel filled with enemies, where an individual connected to a side0quest was trapped at the other end. Surprises lurk in the marshesAlong with these open areas, Hell Is Us also offers dungeons built around puzzles and combat encounters. Aside from the opening introduction, we were shown a later example in the Lymbic Forge, which offered a nice dose of visual variety, with flowery gardens surrounding the boggy marshes. We didn’t get a whole lot of time to explore, but it did highlight the breadth of the combat upgrades and customisation with late-game weapons. Hell Is Us is a melting pot of influences, and while we’re not sold on everything it’s trying to accomplish, it’s certainly another AA game with big, exciting ambitions – a trend amplified this year by the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. For the game’s director, who has a long history in the AAA space working at Eidos Montreal, the jump to AA, with a smaller team and less financial pressure, means you have a better chance of striking gold. More Trending ‘Look at what’s happened to the industry over the past few years,’ Jacques-Belletête said. ‘Everything is crumbling. The big ones are crumbling. It’s unsustainable. And the games are so bloody bland, man. Everything is starting to taste the same. ‘I find there’s nothing worse than starting a game and right away, in the first two minutes, you know how everything’s going to work. You know how every single mechanic is going to work. They might have a littlein how it’s going to feel, or this and that, the user interface will change a bit, but you’ve gone through the ropes a dozen times. ‘A game has to occupy a space in your brain that your brain can’t really compute just yet. When you turn your console off and it stays there, that’s because something is going on. Your brain is processing. And I think that’s a lot easier to do in the AA space than the AAA.’ Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PCPrice: £49.99Publisher: NaconDeveloper: Rogue FactorRelease Date: 4th September 2025Age Rating: 16 The combat itEmail gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy #hell #handson #preview #aaa #games

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Hell Is Us hands-on preview: ‘AAA games are so bloody bland’

Hell Is Us – not a Ubisoft adventure (Nacon) GameCentral goes hands-on with an original sci-fi action adventure where the emphasis is on unguided exploration, with some throwback Zelda inspirations. You might already have heard the name Hell Is Us, as the game was first announced way back in April 2022. We previewed the sci-fi tinged adventure title, developed by Rogue Factor, for the first time last year but now it’s now on the home-straight, with a launch slated for September 4, and it’s shaping up to be a peculiar but intriguing mix of influences and ideas. Our original preview covered the opening portion of the game, so we’ll avoid recycling the same beats here. But for the general gist, you play as a United Nations peacekeeper named Rémi who absconds to the war-torn country of Hadea to track down his parents. A stroll through the tutorial woods later, however, and you realise this isn’t your average civil war. If you’re a fan of Alex Garland’s Annihilation, the strange, faceless alien from the film’s conclusion seems to have been a major influence here. The Hollow Walkers, as they’re called, are very creepy, as they lurch towards you unpredictably, with morphing limbs which give way to vivid, crystallised attacks or, in some cases, attached entities you have to kill first. Their glossy white exteriors act as a stark contrast to the muted eastern European landscapes and dungeons you explore. As a game, Hell Is Us is somewhere between Bloodborne and The Elder Scrolls. Combat wise, it’s pulling from the former, as you manage a stamina bar, study enemy patterns for the best moment to strike, and rely on aggressive play to replenish a magic gauge for special skills. You also have access to a drone which has various uses tied to cooldown meters, between distracting enemies for crowd control andmaking a charging lunge to dash across the field. Rogue Factor has stressed Hell Is Us isn’t a Soulslike though. You’re not scrambling for bonfires or any equivalent, but exploring and chatting with characters to piece together where you need to go next, discovering new places of interest, and encountering side objectives which bleed into the overall experience of navigating each semi-open world area. The ethos behind Hell Is Us is discovery and the organic feeling of finding your feet through clues in the world, rather than using obvious quest markers. This might bring to mind acclaimed games like Elden Ring and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, in their attempt to declutter open world exploration, but the game’s director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, believes the roots of what Hell Is Us is aiming for goes much further back. A cosmic horror vibe (Nacon) ‘Honestly, something like Zelda: A Link To The Past is much closer to what we’re doing now than a Breath Of The Wild,’ said Jacques-Belletête. ‘Sometimes people are like: ‘I really can’t put my finger on what kind of game it is, what is it?’ It’s just a bloody adventure game man. Look, you’ve got a combat system, you’ve got enemies, you’ve got a world to explore, there’s a mystery, you’re not exactly sure of this and that, there’s some secrets, there’s some dungeons, we did a game like that. It’s called an adventure game,’ he laughs. ‘There were even side-quests in A Link To The Past that didn’t tell you they were side-quests.’ Hell Is Us might have roots in classic adventure games but Jacques-Belletête, is keen to highlight the fatigue around Ubisoft style open world bloat, where checklists and quest markers are traditionally used in abundance. With the success of Elden Ring, there’s a sense many players are craving a return to the hands-off approach, where you discover and navigate without guidance – something which Hell Is Us is hoping to capitalise on after being in development for five years. ‘It’s so much of the same thing,’ he says, when talking about Ubisoft style open worlds. ‘It loses all meaning. Things within these open worlds lose a lot of their taste because too much is like not enough. Do you know what I mean? You have to fill up these spaces with stuff and they just become a bit bland. Like once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen all of them. ‘It’s not Assassin’s Creed, it’s not that, it’s all these things. We’ve all played them. I’ve got hundreds of hours in Elder Scrolls, all the Elder Scrolls, and that’s not the point. It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just trends do their time and then you have other ideas. It’s a pendulum as well. Games used to be a lot more hardcore that way, we’re trying to go back to that.’ The crux of my time in Hell Is Us is spent in the Acasa Marshes, the second semi-open area where the game lets you off the leash. The swampy lands are crawling with Hollow Walkers in various forms, from hulking monstrosities to mage-like foes that hurl projectiles from clifftops. A swirling black vortex is a key focal point but it’s surrounded by enemies, while a settlement of villagers sits on a hill in the distance. According to the developer, this area is one of the largest areas in the game, ‘if not the biggest one’, and it seems pretty expansive. We found ourselves heading towards the village, whose militaristic leader points you towards your main objective with only a vague mention of going ‘north east’. You have to dig out your compass to get a grasp on your position, as you try and navigate towards, and identify, the next location based on this information. The lack of quest markers makes the experience more involving, as you have to pay more attention to your surroundings and what characters say, but I wasn’t entirely sold on the story or writing. It’s something which will hopefully become more engrossing as you get a better grasp of what’s going on, but I wish I was drawn to interact with the characters based on something beyond the need to progress. When you are exploring aimlessly though, Hell Is Us offers some captivating chaos – even if some areas did appear to be gated off. We fought our way to the aforementioned swirling black vortex, encountering enemies beyond our skill level, only to find it was inaccessible due to not having a specific item. We later found an underground tunnel filled with enemies, where an individual connected to a side0quest was trapped at the other end. Surprises lurk in the marshes (Nacon) Along with these open areas, Hell Is Us also offers dungeons built around puzzles and combat encounters. Aside from the opening introduction, we were shown a later example in the Lymbic Forge, which offered a nice dose of visual variety, with flowery gardens surrounding the boggy marshes. We didn’t get a whole lot of time to explore, but it did highlight the breadth of the combat upgrades and customisation with late-game weapons. Hell Is Us is a melting pot of influences, and while we’re not sold on everything it’s trying to accomplish, it’s certainly another AA game with big, exciting ambitions – a trend amplified this year by the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. For the game’s director, who has a long history in the AAA space working at Eidos Montreal, the jump to AA, with a smaller team and less financial pressure, means you have a better chance of striking gold. More Trending ‘Look at what’s happened to the industry over the past few years,’ Jacques-Belletête said. ‘Everything is crumbling. The big ones are crumbling. It’s unsustainable. And the games are so bloody bland, man. Everything is starting to taste the same. ‘I find there’s nothing worse than starting a game and right away, in the first two minutes, you know how everything’s going to work. You know how every single mechanic is going to work. They might have a little [extra] in how it’s going to feel, or this and that, the user interface will change a bit, but you’ve gone through the ropes a dozen times. ‘A game has to occupy a space in your brain that your brain can’t really compute just yet. When you turn your console off and it stays there, that’s because something is going on. Your brain is processing. And I think that’s a lot easier to do in the AA space than the AAA.’ Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PCPrice: £49.99Publisher: NaconDeveloper: Rogue FactorRelease Date: 4th September 2025Age Rating: 16 The combat it(Nacon) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

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2025-05-30 13:56:15 ·

Hell is Us Brings a 'New-Weird' Approach to the Sci-Fi Action-RPG

Since its reveal, Hell is Us has been something of an enigma. As an action-RPG that hones in on detective-style investigations within a hauntingly alluring world filled with weird monsters to explore, it's a type of game that tasks players to meet it on its strange and unorthodox terms. For its developers, Hell is Us also represents a game that pushes back against contemporary trends of gaming that places its story and gameplay in a neat package and instead trusts players to piece together just what the hell is going on within the corrupted land of Hadea, and how to survive it.After playing several hours of the opening of Hell is Us along with some mid-game dungeon crawling, I came away with a clearer idea of developer Rogue Factor's new-weird-influenced take on an action-adventure game that pushes players to mind the finer details of the world and maintain poise during some of the intense engagements. So far, Hell is Us is a game that makes charting out into a familiar yet deeply alien world feel captivating.Hell is Us - May 2025 ScreenshotsHell is Us takes place in an alternate 1990s where the fictional European country Hadea is in the midst of a civil war following the events of a mysterious, supernatural incursion known as the "calamity." Playing as Remy, a United Nations peacekeeper and former resident of Hadea, he's detained by a mysterious organization following his mission into Hadea to find his parents. With the organization and its leader pressing down on Remy, he has to recall the fateful decisions he made with the surviving factions and how he fought off the seemingly otherworldly creatures known as Hollow Walkers.The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.“The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which focuses on immersing players into a world that takes a sudden and violent turn to the weird and with a seemingly unreliable protagonist recounting his interpretation of events. Hell is Us fully commits to its premise of a bleak setting and being a stranger in an even stranger land, one that feels familiar with its backwoods and small towns clinging onto survival, but feels so disorientingly strange with the rise of Hollow Walkers and portals that have turned the European countryside into an alien landscape.PlayWhat immediately drew me into Hell is Us was its unusual approach to storytelling and immersing players within its strange world. The sense of mystery is palpable in Hell is Us, and I was constantly walking into areas that had grotesque monsters or strange anomalies that drew my eye. I was especially taken in by the plight of the surviving characters, who struggled to endure in their ramshackle sanctuaries held together by duct tape and dwindling hope. This story very much chucks you into the deep end with its narrative and gameplay flow as you explore the different open zones filled with their puzzles and points of interest.What I found most intriguing, and what I suspect many players will have to come to grips with, is how Hell is Us takes a largely unguided approach to gathering intel and charting out to complete quests with no mini-maps or waypoints to help you in your trek. This very '90s adventure game approach puts the onus on players to listen to the details that the surviving characters bring up in conversations and read the well-organized intel from Remy's personal datapad. It's the type of game that demands a certain level of attention, or else you can find yourself wandering at length to figure out where to go next.PlayOuter Wilds is a particular example that inspired the dev team for its approach to a largely unguided adventure game that gradually expands in scope as more players use their growing knowledge. Speaking with creative director Jonathan Jacques Belletête, the approach the devs took with Hell is Us was all about trusting players with figuring out the mystery and embracing the campaign's more methodical approach to progression.Hell Is UsRogue FactorSep 4, 2025"So at first we really wanted to go full hardcore with this game, like players would have a little notebook and a pen to write notes, because that's where we came from when we played games in our youth, but what inspired us was the general fatigue we've felt with this new contemporary era, like games should never have a problem too big for players to solve because you have to reach every type of player possible," said the creative director. PlayHell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there's a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you're on the desolate road. On the surface, Hell is Us has the makings of a soulslike – and it certainly has some of those elements under the hood – but it goes in a direction with combat and power progression that's more about managing your poise and picking the best moments to strike against enemies that can easily take you out. Some of my favorite moments came using my powered-up weapons to dish out some chunky damage while sending in my drone to stun other enemies off in the wings.Hell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there's a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you're on the desolate road.“The Hollow Walkers in Hell is Us are some of the most visually distinct and unnerving video game enemies I've seen in a long time. They're highly aggressive and can come in large numbers. Still, things get more unnerving once you face off against the powered-up walkers that can summon support enemies that were very much giving The Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion vibes. Once these enemies appear, you'll have to switch up to take them down fast before you can finish off the main walker.PlayMuch like a souls game, stamina management is critical for survival, and I found myself constantly having to be decisive with my skills so as not to overexte nd myself against unforgiving enemies. One interesting wrinkle that took me time to get used to was the fact that health and stamina share a single bar. With your health being your primary source, the more health you lose in a fight, the less stamina you'll have to fight.While you have limited health items, the Lymbic Pulse skill is the best way to help you stay in the fight. Similar to Nioh 1 and 2, activating the pulse immediately after seeing a glow around Remy will instantly restore health and stamina based on the attacks you dish out. It's a very risk-reward approach to combat, and depending on how intense the combat gets, it can be easy to forget to hit the pulse and lose out on health. I found the engagements surprisingly challenging and unrelenting, yet I still felt good about scraping through once I figured out how best to clear out the foes.PlayCombat took the most time for me to get used to, as it's far more survival- and resource-driven than Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Some battles were so unforgiving that I felt unfairly outmatched by the numbers and aggression of the walkers. Still, I managed to rally and rethink my approach by going for it. According to the creative director, he likened their approach to combat with the act of boxing, which is also about managing stamina and dealing with decisive blows when you can."This is us trying to put our own spin on third-person melee combat, and we're always a bit inspired by From Software, but it was important for us to put our spin on," he said. "Like in real life, you pretty much just have one hit point, right? It's all stamina, and when once you're tired and you get hit, you're done. Like, I boxed for a very long time, and when your stamina is done, you're done. So that's where we were coming at it. The more damage you take and the more health you lose, that'll directly affect your efficiency in combat, but we also added in our balance to that with the Lymbic Pulse, to help your restore your health when you do take those risks to lay in damage – and that gives us a bit of a signature to the game as well."PlayI was thoroughly impressed with the visuals and atmosphere of Hell is Us, and it presents such a compelling yet still bizarre mix of fantasy and science fiction. Along with the other games mentioned, another piece of media that served as a key influence was Alex Garland's 2018 film Annihilation, which dealt with exploring an environment that underwent radical and violent change. It presents such an intriguing setting, but at times, the hardened and traditional adventure game approach Hell is Us takes to taking in the details and surviving this world felt a bit too stoic for its own good.Still, I was very invested in the bizarre, new-weird setting that Rogue Factor has crafted, and it so far has the makings of being one of 2025's more original and creative takes on the action-RPG experience. Given that this year saw the rise of Blue Prince's reinvention of a roguelite puzzle adventure, it'd be fitting for Hell is Us to succeed with its own reinvention with its new type of role-playing experience.
#hell #brings #039newweird039 #approach #scifi

Hell is Us Brings a 'New-Weird' Approach to the Sci-Fi Action-RPG
Since its reveal, Hell is Us has been something of an enigma. As an action-RPG that hones in on detective-style investigations within a hauntingly alluring world filled with weird monsters to explore, it's a type of game that tasks players to meet it on its strange and unorthodox terms. For its developers, Hell is Us also represents a game that pushes back against contemporary trends of gaming that places its story and gameplay in a neat package and instead trusts players to piece together just what the hell is going on within the corrupted land of Hadea, and how to survive it.After playing several hours of the opening of Hell is Us along with some mid-game dungeon crawling, I came away with a clearer idea of developer Rogue Factor's new-weird-influenced take on an action-adventure game that pushes players to mind the finer details of the world and maintain poise during some of the intense engagements. So far, Hell is Us is a game that makes charting out into a familiar yet deeply alien world feel captivating.Hell is Us - May 2025 ScreenshotsHell is Us takes place in an alternate 1990s where the fictional European country Hadea is in the midst of a civil war following the events of a mysterious, supernatural incursion known as the "calamity." Playing as Remy, a United Nations peacekeeper and former resident of Hadea, he's detained by a mysterious organization following his mission into Hadea to find his parents. With the organization and its leader pressing down on Remy, he has to recall the fateful decisions he made with the surviving factions and how he fought off the seemingly otherworldly creatures known as Hollow Walkers.The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.“The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which focuses on immersing players into a world that takes a sudden and violent turn to the weird and with a seemingly unreliable protagonist recounting his interpretation of events. Hell is Us fully commits to its premise of a bleak setting and being a stranger in an even stranger land, one that feels familiar with its backwoods and small towns clinging onto survival, but feels so disorientingly strange with the rise of Hollow Walkers and portals that have turned the European countryside into an alien landscape.PlayWhat immediately drew me into Hell is Us was its unusual approach to storytelling and immersing players within its strange world. The sense of mystery is palpable in Hell is Us, and I was constantly walking into areas that had grotesque monsters or strange anomalies that drew my eye. I was especially taken in by the plight of the surviving characters, who struggled to endure in their ramshackle sanctuaries held together by duct tape and dwindling hope. This story very much chucks you into the deep end with its narrative and gameplay flow as you explore the different open zones filled with their puzzles and points of interest.What I found most intriguing, and what I suspect many players will have to come to grips with, is how Hell is Us takes a largely unguided approach to gathering intel and charting out to complete quests with no mini-maps or waypoints to help you in your trek. This very '90s adventure game approach puts the onus on players to listen to the details that the surviving characters bring up in conversations and read the well-organized intel from Remy's personal datapad. It's the type of game that demands a certain level of attention, or else you can find yourself wandering at length to figure out where to go next.PlayOuter Wilds is a particular example that inspired the dev team for its approach to a largely unguided adventure game that gradually expands in scope as more players use their growing knowledge. Speaking with creative director Jonathan Jacques Belletête, the approach the devs took with Hell is Us was all about trusting players with figuring out the mystery and embracing the campaign's more methodical approach to progression.Hell Is UsRogue FactorSep 4, 2025"So at first we really wanted to go full hardcore with this game, like players would have a little notebook and a pen to write notes, because that's where we came from when we played games in our youth, but what inspired us was the general fatigue we've felt with this new contemporary era, like games should never have a problem too big for players to solve because you have to reach every type of player possible," said the creative director. PlayHell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there's a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you're on the desolate road. On the surface, Hell is Us has the makings of a soulslike – and it certainly has some of those elements under the hood – but it goes in a direction with combat and power progression that's more about managing your poise and picking the best moments to strike against enemies that can easily take you out. Some of my favorite moments came using my powered-up weapons to dish out some chunky damage while sending in my drone to stun other enemies off in the wings.Hell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there's a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you're on the desolate road.“The Hollow Walkers in Hell is Us are some of the most visually distinct and unnerving video game enemies I've seen in a long time. They're highly aggressive and can come in large numbers. Still, things get more unnerving once you face off against the powered-up walkers that can summon support enemies that were very much giving The Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion vibes. Once these enemies appear, you'll have to switch up to take them down fast before you can finish off the main walker.PlayMuch like a souls game, stamina management is critical for survival, and I found myself constantly having to be decisive with my skills so as not to overexte nd myself against unforgiving enemies. One interesting wrinkle that took me time to get used to was the fact that health and stamina share a single bar. With your health being your primary source, the more health you lose in a fight, the less stamina you'll have to fight.While you have limited health items, the Lymbic Pulse skill is the best way to help you stay in the fight. Similar to Nioh 1 and 2, activating the pulse immediately after seeing a glow around Remy will instantly restore health and stamina based on the attacks you dish out. It's a very risk-reward approach to combat, and depending on how intense the combat gets, it can be easy to forget to hit the pulse and lose out on health. I found the engagements surprisingly challenging and unrelenting, yet I still felt good about scraping through once I figured out how best to clear out the foes.PlayCombat took the most time for me to get used to, as it's far more survival- and resource-driven than Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Some battles were so unforgiving that I felt unfairly outmatched by the numbers and aggression of the walkers. Still, I managed to rally and rethink my approach by going for it. According to the creative director, he likened their approach to combat with the act of boxing, which is also about managing stamina and dealing with decisive blows when you can."This is us trying to put our own spin on third-person melee combat, and we're always a bit inspired by From Software, but it was important for us to put our spin on," he said. "Like in real life, you pretty much just have one hit point, right? It's all stamina, and when once you're tired and you get hit, you're done. Like, I boxed for a very long time, and when your stamina is done, you're done. So that's where we were coming at it. The more damage you take and the more health you lose, that'll directly affect your efficiency in combat, but we also added in our balance to that with the Lymbic Pulse, to help your restore your health when you do take those risks to lay in damage – and that gives us a bit of a signature to the game as well."PlayI was thoroughly impressed with the visuals and atmosphere of Hell is Us, and it presents such a compelling yet still bizarre mix of fantasy and science fiction. Along with the other games mentioned, another piece of media that served as a key influence was Alex Garland's 2018 film Annihilation, which dealt with exploring an environment that underwent radical and violent change. It presents such an intriguing setting, but at times, the hardened and traditional adventure game approach Hell is Us takes to taking in the details and surviving this world felt a bit too stoic for its own good.Still, I was very invested in the bizarre, new-weird setting that Rogue Factor has crafted, and it so far has the makings of being one of 2025's more original and creative takes on the action-RPG experience. Given that this year saw the rise of Blue Prince's reinvention of a roguelite puzzle adventure, it'd be fitting for Hell is Us to succeed with its own reinvention with its new type of role-playing experience. #hell #brings #039newweird039 #approach #scifi

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Hell is Us Brings a 'New-Weird' Approach to the Sci-Fi Action-RPG

Since its reveal, Hell is Us has been something of an enigma. As an action-RPG that hones in on detective-style investigations within a hauntingly alluring world filled with weird monsters to explore, it's a type of game that tasks players to meet it on its strange and unorthodox terms. For its developers, Hell is Us also represents a game that pushes back against contemporary trends of gaming that places its story and gameplay in a neat package and instead trusts players to piece together just what the hell is going on within the corrupted land of Hadea, and how to survive it.After playing several hours of the opening of Hell is Us along with some mid-game dungeon crawling, I came away with a clearer idea of developer Rogue Factor's new-weird-influenced take on an action-adventure game that pushes players to mind the finer details of the world and maintain poise during some of the intense engagements. So far, Hell is Us is a game that makes charting out into a familiar yet deeply alien world feel captivating.Hell is Us - May 2025 ScreenshotsHell is Us takes place in an alternate 1990s where the fictional European country Hadea is in the midst of a civil war following the events of a mysterious, supernatural incursion known as the "calamity." Playing as Remy, a United Nations peacekeeper and former resident of Hadea, he's detained by a mysterious organization following his mission into Hadea to find his parents. With the organization and its leader pressing down on Remy, he has to recall the fateful decisions he made with the surviving factions and how he fought off the seemingly otherworldly creatures known as Hollow Walkers.The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.“The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which focuses on immersing players into a world that takes a sudden and violent turn to the weird and with a seemingly unreliable protagonist recounting his interpretation of events. Hell is Us fully commits to its premise of a bleak setting and being a stranger in an even stranger land, one that feels familiar with its backwoods and small towns clinging onto survival, but feels so disorientingly strange with the rise of Hollow Walkers and portals that have turned the European countryside into an alien landscape.PlayWhat immediately drew me into Hell is Us was its unusual approach to storytelling and immersing players within its strange world. The sense of mystery is palpable in Hell is Us, and I was constantly walking into areas that had grotesque monsters or strange anomalies that drew my eye. I was especially taken in by the plight of the surviving characters, who struggled to endure in their ramshackle sanctuaries held together by duct tape and dwindling hope. This story very much chucks you into the deep end with its narrative and gameplay flow as you explore the different open zones filled with their puzzles and points of interest.What I found most intriguing, and what I suspect many players will have to come to grips with, is how Hell is Us takes a largely unguided approach to gathering intel and charting out to complete quests with no mini-maps or waypoints to help you in your trek. This very '90s adventure game approach puts the onus on players to listen to the details that the surviving characters bring up in conversations and read the well-organized intel from Remy's personal datapad. It's the type of game that demands a certain level of attention, or else you can find yourself wandering at length to figure out where to go next.PlayOuter Wilds is a particular example that inspired the dev team for its approach to a largely unguided adventure game that gradually expands in scope as more players use their growing knowledge. Speaking with creative director Jonathan Jacques Belletête, the approach the devs took with Hell is Us was all about trusting players with figuring out the mystery and embracing the campaign's more methodical approach to progression.Hell Is UsRogue FactorSep 4, 2025"So at first we really wanted to go full hardcore with this game, like players would have a little notebook and a pen to write notes, because that's where we came from when we played games in our youth, but what inspired us was the general fatigue we've felt with this new contemporary era, like games should never have a problem too big for players to solve because you have to reach every type of player possible," said the creative director. PlayHell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there's a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you're on the desolate road. On the surface, Hell is Us has the makings of a soulslike – and it certainly has some of those elements under the hood – but it goes in a direction with combat and power progression that's more about managing your poise and picking the best moments to strike against enemies that can easily take you out. Some of my favorite moments came using my powered-up weapons to dish out some chunky damage while sending in my drone to stun other enemies off in the wings.Hell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there's a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you're on the desolate road.“The Hollow Walkers in Hell is Us are some of the most visually distinct and unnerving video game enemies I've seen in a long time. They're highly aggressive and can come in large numbers. Still, things get more unnerving once you face off against the powered-up walkers that can summon support enemies that were very much giving The Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion vibes. Once these enemies appear, you'll have to switch up to take them down fast before you can finish off the main walker.PlayMuch like a souls game, stamina management is critical for survival, and I found myself constantly having to be decisive with my skills so as not to overexte nd myself against unforgiving enemies. One interesting wrinkle that took me time to get used to was the fact that health and stamina share a single bar. With your health being your primary source, the more health you lose in a fight, the less stamina you'll have to fight.While you have limited health items, the Lymbic Pulse skill is the best way to help you stay in the fight. Similar to Nioh 1 and 2, activating the pulse immediately after seeing a glow around Remy will instantly restore health and stamina based on the attacks you dish out. It's a very risk-reward approach to combat, and depending on how intense the combat gets, it can be easy to forget to hit the pulse and lose out on health. I found the engagements surprisingly challenging and unrelenting, yet I still felt good about scraping through once I figured out how best to clear out the foes.PlayCombat took the most time for me to get used to, as it's far more survival- and resource-driven than Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Some battles were so unforgiving that I felt unfairly outmatched by the numbers and aggression of the walkers. Still, I managed to rally and rethink my approach by going for it. According to the creative director, he likened their approach to combat with the act of boxing, which is also about managing stamina and dealing with decisive blows when you can."This is us trying to put our own spin on third-person melee combat, and we're always a bit inspired by From Software, but it was important for us to put our spin on," he said. "Like in real life, you pretty much just have one hit point, right? It's all stamina, and when once you're tired and you get hit, you're done. Like, I boxed for a very long time, and when your stamina is done, you're done. So that's where we were coming at it. The more damage you take and the more health you lose, that'll directly affect your efficiency in combat, but we also added in our balance to that with the Lymbic Pulse, to help your restore your health when you do take those risks to lay in damage – and that gives us a bit of a signature to the game as well."PlayI was thoroughly impressed with the visuals and atmosphere of Hell is Us, and it presents such a compelling yet still bizarre mix of fantasy and science fiction. Along with the other games mentioned, another piece of media that served as a key influence was Alex Garland's 2018 film Annihilation, which dealt with exploring an environment that underwent radical and violent change. It presents such an intriguing setting, but at times, the hardened and traditional adventure game approach Hell is Us takes to taking in the details and surviving this world felt a bit too stoic for its own good.Still, I was very invested in the bizarre, new-weird setting that Rogue Factor has crafted, and it so far has the makings of being one of 2025's more original and creative takes on the action-RPG experience. Given that this year saw the rise of Blue Prince's reinvention of a roguelite puzzle adventure, it'd be fitting for Hell is Us to succeed with its own reinvention with its new type of role-playing experience.

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Indie Games Plus paylaşılan bir bağlantı

2025-05-27 17:54:16 ·

‘The Deadseat’ Plays Retro DS Games to Survive Horrors

The Deadseat has you playing games in the back seat of the car, using items pulled from the game world to save you in real life.

You’re a child on a long nighttime drive home and your parents are bickering back and forth. You’re hungry, but they seem too caught in their fight to care very much. In fact, they’re so caught up in their fight that they don’t notice that something keeps crawling onto the roof of the car. Or that it is trying to break into the back seat to get their child. Thankfully you’re resourceful AND you have a handheld console game that gives you helpful tools in the ‘real’ world if you collect them within the game world.

Juggling the real world and the game world is the hard part, though. Once you collect a camera within the game, you can use it to snap pictures of the beast as it tries to creep into your car, making it flee due to the flash. However, you’ll need to skulk around the world of your video game to find further supplies to keep this thing at bay. For instance, the car needs gas, and you only pick that up within the game by swerving around a track and picking up cans in your path. You can’t exactly pause this game, though, when a two-headed horror starts to gnaw on your head, so you will miss those gas cans as you use the camera to get the monster to back off. Managing several different tasks while scaring off the monster is a stressful tightrope to walk, but you’ll need to if you want to survive this drive.
The Deadseat is incredibly stressful to play, stretching you so thin that its scares hit like a truck. But it’s extremely satisfying if you like being startled and having your heart pound out of your chest.
The Deadseat is available now on Steam.
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#deadseat #plays #retro #games #survive

‘The Deadseat’ Plays Retro DS Games to Survive Horrors
The Deadseat has you playing games in the back seat of the car, using items pulled from the game world to save you in real life. You’re a child on a long nighttime drive home and your parents are bickering back and forth. You’re hungry, but they seem too caught in their fight to care very much. In fact, they’re so caught up in their fight that they don’t notice that something keeps crawling onto the roof of the car. Or that it is trying to break into the back seat to get their child. Thankfully you’re resourceful AND you have a handheld console game that gives you helpful tools in the ‘real’ world if you collect them within the game world. Juggling the real world and the game world is the hard part, though. Once you collect a camera within the game, you can use it to snap pictures of the beast as it tries to creep into your car, making it flee due to the flash. However, you’ll need to skulk around the world of your video game to find further supplies to keep this thing at bay. For instance, the car needs gas, and you only pick that up within the game by swerving around a track and picking up cans in your path. You can’t exactly pause this game, though, when a two-headed horror starts to gnaw on your head, so you will miss those gas cans as you use the camera to get the monster to back off. Managing several different tasks while scaring off the monster is a stressful tightrope to walk, but you’ll need to if you want to survive this drive. The Deadseat is incredibly stressful to play, stretching you so thin that its scares hit like a truck. But it’s extremely satisfying if you like being startled and having your heart pound out of your chest. The Deadseat is available now on Steam. About The Author #deadseat #plays #retro #games #survive

INDIEGAMESPLUS.COM

‘The Deadseat’ Plays Retro DS Games to Survive Horrors

The Deadseat has you playing games in the back seat of the car, using items pulled from the game world to save you in real life. You’re a child on a long nighttime drive home and your parents are bickering back and forth. You’re hungry, but they seem too caught in their fight to care very much. In fact, they’re so caught up in their fight that they don’t notice that something keeps crawling onto the roof of the car. Or that it is trying to break into the back seat to get their child. Thankfully you’re resourceful AND you have a handheld console game that gives you helpful tools in the ‘real’ world if you collect them within the game world. Juggling the real world and the game world is the hard part, though. Once you collect a camera within the game, you can use it to snap pictures of the beast as it tries to creep into your car, making it flee due to the flash. However, you’ll need to skulk around the world of your video game to find further supplies to keep this thing at bay. For instance, the car needs gas, and you only pick that up within the game by swerving around a track and picking up cans in your path. You can’t exactly pause this game, though, when a two-headed horror starts to gnaw on your head, so you will miss those gas cans as you use the camera to get the monster to back off. Managing several different tasks while scaring off the monster is a stressful tightrope to walk, but you’ll need to if you want to survive this drive. The Deadseat is incredibly stressful to play (especially when you have to start taking the wheel and swerving to avoid monsters in the road on top of everything else, too), stretching you so thin that its scares hit like a truck. But it’s extremely satisfying if you like being startled and having your heart pound out of your chest (especially if you play the Hard Mode campaign that continues the story). The Deadseat is available now on Steam. About The Author

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2025-05-26 00:43:41 ·

Essay from Bangladesh

Click to enlarge

Housing build-ups in Dhaka.

Image: Jeremy Smith

1 of 11

Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque.

Image: Jeremy Smith

2 of 11

Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque.

Image: Jeremy Smith

3 of 11

Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque.

Image: Jeremy Smith

4 of 11

Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque.

Image: Jeremy Smith

5 of 11

Old Dhaka and 45,000 people per square kilometre.

Image: Jeremy Smith

6 of 11

Buses collage life on the roads.

Image: Jeremy Smith

7 of 11

Lattice-work roofing of the informal settlements, viewed from Salauddin Ahmed’s Atelier Robin Architects studio.

Image: Jeremy Smith

8 of 11

The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life.

Image: Jeremy Smith

9 of 11

The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life.

Image: Jeremy Smith

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The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life.

Image: Jeremy Smith

11 of 11

Architects Jeremy Smith and Murali Bhaskar go looking for water and hard-to-find buildings in what is already one of the world’s most populous mega-cities, Dhaka.

Architecture here is rarely properly lost. Even now, as we navigate a way to higher-density living, we tend not to misplace buildings. There’s still the space to eye-spy our most wayward elevations. At worst, we might GPS a tricky driveway or pull out an Andrew Barrie map to pinpoint some retiring architecture. But what happens if you really diamond-up the density. At our country-wide 19-people-per-square-kilometre or even downtown Auckland’s sky-high 2500, you can see what’s coming and cities mostly plan out as planned. Teleport forward though to 45,000-people-per-square-kilometre and cities accelerate lives of their own. Here, anything and everything can be lost in the crowd, even buildings. So, on a 2024 invitation from the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements to share some Unfinished & Far Far Away adventures in “the toughest city in the world”,1 I pack some extra compassing in architect buddy Murali Bhaskar and go architectural orienteering in Dhaka.
It’s hot hot; architecture can wait. We start by looking for water. This, after all, is the land of rivers. Following on from Aotearoa in 2017 being the first to give a specific river, Te Awa Tupua, legal rights, Bangladesh in 2019 became the first country to grant all of its some 700 rivers the same legal status that humans have.2 But the count varies. Protections readily miss smaller tributaries and, with all that water pouring out of the Himalayas and delta-ing into the Bay of Bengal, the land is accretional.

The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image:

Jeremy Smith

From the million or so starters in a newly independent 1971 Dhaka, today, it is the fourth-most-populated city in the world with somewhere near 25 million people. Whether for disaster relief, economics or just the bright lights, urbanisation draws more than 400,000 new residents annually to the city. Throw in some family time and, with Tokyo and Shanghai shrinking, Dhaka’s population is predicted to be an eyewatering 35 million by 2050. When every possible place looks inhabited, it’s not just water that can quickly go to ground.
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, who heads the Bengal Institute, has some learned thinkers in tow in trying to keep pace architecturally. Throw in societal and climatic concerns, and questions about how contextualisation might operate at such speed and the inquiry takes global precedence. Kenneth Frampton, Rounaq Jahan, Suha Özkan, Shamsul Wares and, formerly, BV Doshi, sit on the advisory panel and have drawn other such worldly thinkers as Juhani Pallasmaa, David Leatherbarrow and, even, Peter Stutchbury from down our way to come experience an urban existence “symptomatic of the gravest environmental challenges”.3 It’s serious stuff. Ashraf researches “hydraulic flow in which horizontal and vertical movements of water may direct architectural and landscape formations”.4 This ‘form follows water’ mantra isn’t just free planning Le Corbusier’s ‘form follows function’ with some Charles Correa’s ‘form follows climate’ to connect to life outside, it’s a watery warning to the navigations quickly necessitating within our collective future.
Ashraf’s timely prompt that “Embankment is a barrier. How can we deconstruct it”5 can be seen in the way we increasingly plan the separation of wet and dry in our cities. Main streets like Queen Street and Cambridge Terrace already run down streams and our remaining water edges risk becoming increasingly marginalised by infrastructure rising with the water. But the steering is different at density and Dhaka’s rapid growth has meant letting go of the controls with which we still understand cities to flow. As Ashraf puts it, “Dhaka builds furiously”. While we dutifully plan buildings as if crawling a length or two at the aquatic centre, architecture in Dhaka must high-dive into a torrent. Its buildings must learn to surface and really start kicking. Anything trying to hold ground risks being swept away. Dhaka has become a river.
As if to university-entrance the swimming lesson to densification, we’ve arrived only a few months after an Indian helicopter plucked Bangladesh’s president from a student-led flood of unrest amongst civil rights and corruption demonstrations. We might think of universities as offering time for trying things on but, sink or swim, the students here now run the country. With the parliament dissolved, there’s no chance of us seeing inside Louis Kahn’s 1982 National Assembly Building, which, like many of Dhaka’s institutional buildings, took on something of a freshening in the coup. Remembering our government’s pre-departure, bold-italic travel advisory, we head out to practise avoiding street demonstrations and are rewarded with a fenced-off view of Kahn’s epic, which brought global architectural discourse to post-independent Bangladesh. No such authoritative access issues back at the university, where, amongst the student political murals, we visit Muzharul Islam’s 1953–1956 Fine Arts Institute. Islam introduced modernism to the then East Pakistan6 and, in testament, the school still functions as a school, with its external verandah circulation and louvred ventilating classrooms.
The rallying extends to getting around with cars sporting dodgem bumpers. Travelling 10 kilometres takes an hour, a million beeps and some financial socialising out the windows. Public transport may be working hard to keep pace with the kinetic city but it starts at the back of the grid, as the panelwork to the buses visibly collage. Getting to where we want to go takes some effort. An above-ground subway system has been started but not finished and the folk enticingly riding on top of trains typically aren’t off looking for architecture. There’s the three-wheeled rickshaw option, of course: formerly pedalled but, in recent months, souped-up with the allowance of car batteries to the back axle. Even so, manoeuvring further than nearby takes more than any rider is up for. So, as we head out for lunch with architect Marina Tabassum and then beep beep beep out further to her extraordinary Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque in Dhaka’s northern expansion, we learn that having everything close helps. Neighbourhoods remain important in megacities.

Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image:

Jeremy Smith

The mosque deserves the full medley and gently uplifts as all great architecture does, be it for the community or off-the-street visitors like us. Marina Tabassum Architects is, of course, internationally renowned for its architectural stand against globalised buildings that are out of place and context, notably winning an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 and being selected to undertake the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion in London.
With the site at 13 degrees to the axis of qibla in Mecca, Tabassum sits the mosque on a five-step plinth with a squared, ventilating brick jali and a circular ceilinged prayer space rotated off centre. In a lesson to building only what you need, the spaces between remain unroofed and the perimeter daylight illumination provides a diminished and equalling light to the prayer space. It needs no explanation: look up and there are constellations in the sky; look outwards and find community; look to the mihrab notching the outside wall and orientate to Mecca. Tabassum’s dive is splashless, for the mosque has self-navigated being enveloped by the city. The entry pond may have gone and the mihrab now reveals buildings rather than fields but the light still shines the way. Four hundred people take prayer several times a day within the inner circle, and the weekend Friday crowd spreads outwards to the borders and plinth.
We are two days in at this point and our not-getting-lost-practice is going well. We meet architect Salauddin Ahmed whose Atelier Robin Architects studio and gallery in a former tannery building is so hidden away that it feels both lost and right at home. It’s surrounded by the latticing roofs of informal settlements and, remarkably, feels quiet and yet, genuinely, part of the city. No mean feat in a city, “living”, as Ahmed puts it, “as if this is the last day on earth”. Noise is life in Dhaka; Ahmed’s windows are open and the river is flowing. We talk the same language of architecture understanding existing context and needing to accommodate change in shorter and shorter time frames. Where I say “participate”, Ahmed terms “navigate” and without any sense of overseeing for there is just so much life in Dhaka. We mean the same thing and get there from very different landscapes. The next morning, we go where transport can’t.
Old Dhaka’s alleyways require some extra eyes, so Ahmed calls in his friend, photographer Khademul Insan, who has lived this labyrinth. This is the densest part of Dhaka and there’s a lot in the air. “Wear this,” says Ahmed, passing a mask. “Otherwise, you’ll cough for four weeks.” It is deep. There’s so much WiFi that it strands like some kind of underworld sun-shading. Our service provider isn’t expecting this kind of roaming and we have no connection. If our collective Kiwi wayfinding skills might have fluked a way in, we certainly need leading out. As the lanes narrow, the industry broadens into some kind of Mad Max circular economy where everything of anything has value and the fires that keep these people afloat run continuously. Mercifully, it’s not raining or there’d be a different type of river afoot.
Fifteen kilometres and all day later, we’ve walked to search for culturally significant mosques, houses, courtyards and schools. Some we locate; others, there’s just no finding. Maybe they are there, maybe they aren’t. Occasionally, there are scripts cautioning against graffiti or carving a name into the stonework at the risk of imprisonment, but there are few clues to any architectural history. In the pinch, buildings jostle to just about every possible place a building might go: on top, under, in front, behind. They infill courtyards, hang over laneways, squeeze into gaps, even penalising what’s left of a football field. Every seat is taken, literally. Whenever we find public space off the street, there are couples dating. There’s a lot of romance in 25 million.
Eventually, we exit and finally see a river. I remember the swimming lessons are strictly metaphoric and look but don’t touch. You don’t need to get wet to learn how to swim. As Ahmed guides, and he speaks with Ashraf, Tabassum, Insan and experience to what we must remember in densifying our own cities. “I belong to one of the last generations that truly understand what it means to have neighbours.”7 Context counts no matter the size. Our rivers are not yet streams.
REFERENCES
1 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024.
2 Ashley Westerman, 2019, “Should rivers have same legal rights as humans? A growing number of voices say yes”, National Public Radio. npr.org/2019/08/03/740604142 3 August 2019.
3 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024.
4 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Wet Narratives: Architecture Must Recognise that the Future is Fluid’ in The Mother Tongue of Architecture: Selected writings of Kazi Khaleed Ashraf. ORO Editions and Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements, China: p. 251.
5 Ibid.
6 Adnan Morshed, 2017, ‘Modernism as Postnationalist Politics: Muzharul Islam’s Faculty ofFine Arts’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2017.
7 Salauddin Ahmed, 2024, “Design must not be a superimposed idea, but a logical one”, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 25 December 2024.
#essay #bangladesh

Essay from Bangladesh
Click to enlarge Housing build-ups in Dhaka. Image: Jeremy Smith 1 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 2 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 3 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 4 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 5 of 11 Old Dhaka and 45,000 people per square kilometre. Image: Jeremy Smith 6 of 11 Buses collage life on the roads. Image: Jeremy Smith 7 of 11 Lattice-work roofing of the informal settlements, viewed from Salauddin Ahmed’s Atelier Robin Architects studio. Image: Jeremy Smith 8 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 9 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 10 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 11 of 11 Architects Jeremy Smith and Murali Bhaskar go looking for water and hard-to-find buildings in what is already one of the world’s most populous mega-cities, Dhaka. Architecture here is rarely properly lost. Even now, as we navigate a way to higher-density living, we tend not to misplace buildings. There’s still the space to eye-spy our most wayward elevations. At worst, we might GPS a tricky driveway or pull out an Andrew Barrie map to pinpoint some retiring architecture. But what happens if you really diamond-up the density. At our country-wide 19-people-per-square-kilometre or even downtown Auckland’s sky-high 2500, you can see what’s coming and cities mostly plan out as planned. Teleport forward though to 45,000-people-per-square-kilometre and cities accelerate lives of their own. Here, anything and everything can be lost in the crowd, even buildings. So, on a 2024 invitation from the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements to share some Unfinished & Far Far Away adventures in “the toughest city in the world”,1 I pack some extra compassing in architect buddy Murali Bhaskar and go architectural orienteering in Dhaka. It’s hot hot; architecture can wait. We start by looking for water. This, after all, is the land of rivers. Following on from Aotearoa in 2017 being the first to give a specific river, Te Awa Tupua, legal rights, Bangladesh in 2019 became the first country to grant all of its some 700 rivers the same legal status that humans have.2 But the count varies. Protections readily miss smaller tributaries and, with all that water pouring out of the Himalayas and delta-ing into the Bay of Bengal, the land is accretional. The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith From the million or so starters in a newly independent 1971 Dhaka, today, it is the fourth-most-populated city in the world with somewhere near 25 million people. Whether for disaster relief, economics or just the bright lights, urbanisation draws more than 400,000 new residents annually to the city. Throw in some family time and, with Tokyo and Shanghai shrinking, Dhaka’s population is predicted to be an eyewatering 35 million by 2050. When every possible place looks inhabited, it’s not just water that can quickly go to ground. Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, who heads the Bengal Institute, has some learned thinkers in tow in trying to keep pace architecturally. Throw in societal and climatic concerns, and questions about how contextualisation might operate at such speed and the inquiry takes global precedence. Kenneth Frampton, Rounaq Jahan, Suha Özkan, Shamsul Wares and, formerly, BV Doshi, sit on the advisory panel and have drawn other such worldly thinkers as Juhani Pallasmaa, David Leatherbarrow and, even, Peter Stutchbury from down our way to come experience an urban existence “symptomatic of the gravest environmental challenges”.3 It’s serious stuff. Ashraf researches “hydraulic flow in which horizontal and vertical movements of water may direct architectural and landscape formations”.4 This ‘form follows water’ mantra isn’t just free planning Le Corbusier’s ‘form follows function’ with some Charles Correa’s ‘form follows climate’ to connect to life outside, it’s a watery warning to the navigations quickly necessitating within our collective future. Ashraf’s timely prompt that “Embankment is a barrier. How can we deconstruct it”5 can be seen in the way we increasingly plan the separation of wet and dry in our cities. Main streets like Queen Street and Cambridge Terrace already run down streams and our remaining water edges risk becoming increasingly marginalised by infrastructure rising with the water. But the steering is different at density and Dhaka’s rapid growth has meant letting go of the controls with which we still understand cities to flow. As Ashraf puts it, “Dhaka builds furiously”. While we dutifully plan buildings as if crawling a length or two at the aquatic centre, architecture in Dhaka must high-dive into a torrent. Its buildings must learn to surface and really start kicking. Anything trying to hold ground risks being swept away. Dhaka has become a river. As if to university-entrance the swimming lesson to densification, we’ve arrived only a few months after an Indian helicopter plucked Bangladesh’s president from a student-led flood of unrest amongst civil rights and corruption demonstrations. We might think of universities as offering time for trying things on but, sink or swim, the students here now run the country. With the parliament dissolved, there’s no chance of us seeing inside Louis Kahn’s 1982 National Assembly Building, which, like many of Dhaka’s institutional buildings, took on something of a freshening in the coup. Remembering our government’s pre-departure, bold-italic travel advisory, we head out to practise avoiding street demonstrations and are rewarded with a fenced-off view of Kahn’s epic, which brought global architectural discourse to post-independent Bangladesh. No such authoritative access issues back at the university, where, amongst the student political murals, we visit Muzharul Islam’s 1953–1956 Fine Arts Institute. Islam introduced modernism to the then East Pakistan6 and, in testament, the school still functions as a school, with its external verandah circulation and louvred ventilating classrooms. The rallying extends to getting around with cars sporting dodgem bumpers. Travelling 10 kilometres takes an hour, a million beeps and some financial socialising out the windows. Public transport may be working hard to keep pace with the kinetic city but it starts at the back of the grid, as the panelwork to the buses visibly collage. Getting to where we want to go takes some effort. An above-ground subway system has been started but not finished and the folk enticingly riding on top of trains typically aren’t off looking for architecture. There’s the three-wheeled rickshaw option, of course: formerly pedalled but, in recent months, souped-up with the allowance of car batteries to the back axle. Even so, manoeuvring further than nearby takes more than any rider is up for. So, as we head out for lunch with architect Marina Tabassum and then beep beep beep out further to her extraordinary Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque in Dhaka’s northern expansion, we learn that having everything close helps. Neighbourhoods remain important in megacities. Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith The mosque deserves the full medley and gently uplifts as all great architecture does, be it for the community or off-the-street visitors like us. Marina Tabassum Architects is, of course, internationally renowned for its architectural stand against globalised buildings that are out of place and context, notably winning an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 and being selected to undertake the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion in London. With the site at 13 degrees to the axis of qibla in Mecca, Tabassum sits the mosque on a five-step plinth with a squared, ventilating brick jali and a circular ceilinged prayer space rotated off centre. In a lesson to building only what you need, the spaces between remain unroofed and the perimeter daylight illumination provides a diminished and equalling light to the prayer space. It needs no explanation: look up and there are constellations in the sky; look outwards and find community; look to the mihrab notching the outside wall and orientate to Mecca. Tabassum’s dive is splashless, for the mosque has self-navigated being enveloped by the city. The entry pond may have gone and the mihrab now reveals buildings rather than fields but the light still shines the way. Four hundred people take prayer several times a day within the inner circle, and the weekend Friday crowd spreads outwards to the borders and plinth. We are two days in at this point and our not-getting-lost-practice is going well. We meet architect Salauddin Ahmed whose Atelier Robin Architects studio and gallery in a former tannery building is so hidden away that it feels both lost and right at home. It’s surrounded by the latticing roofs of informal settlements and, remarkably, feels quiet and yet, genuinely, part of the city. No mean feat in a city, “living”, as Ahmed puts it, “as if this is the last day on earth”. Noise is life in Dhaka; Ahmed’s windows are open and the river is flowing. We talk the same language of architecture understanding existing context and needing to accommodate change in shorter and shorter time frames. Where I say “participate”, Ahmed terms “navigate” and without any sense of overseeing for there is just so much life in Dhaka. We mean the same thing and get there from very different landscapes. The next morning, we go where transport can’t. Old Dhaka’s alleyways require some extra eyes, so Ahmed calls in his friend, photographer Khademul Insan, who has lived this labyrinth. This is the densest part of Dhaka and there’s a lot in the air. “Wear this,” says Ahmed, passing a mask. “Otherwise, you’ll cough for four weeks.” It is deep. There’s so much WiFi that it strands like some kind of underworld sun-shading. Our service provider isn’t expecting this kind of roaming and we have no connection. If our collective Kiwi wayfinding skills might have fluked a way in, we certainly need leading out. As the lanes narrow, the industry broadens into some kind of Mad Max circular economy where everything of anything has value and the fires that keep these people afloat run continuously. Mercifully, it’s not raining or there’d be a different type of river afoot. Fifteen kilometres and all day later, we’ve walked to search for culturally significant mosques, houses, courtyards and schools. Some we locate; others, there’s just no finding. Maybe they are there, maybe they aren’t. Occasionally, there are scripts cautioning against graffiti or carving a name into the stonework at the risk of imprisonment, but there are few clues to any architectural history. In the pinch, buildings jostle to just about every possible place a building might go: on top, under, in front, behind. They infill courtyards, hang over laneways, squeeze into gaps, even penalising what’s left of a football field. Every seat is taken, literally. Whenever we find public space off the street, there are couples dating. There’s a lot of romance in 25 million. Eventually, we exit and finally see a river. I remember the swimming lessons are strictly metaphoric and look but don’t touch. You don’t need to get wet to learn how to swim. As Ahmed guides, and he speaks with Ashraf, Tabassum, Insan and experience to what we must remember in densifying our own cities. “I belong to one of the last generations that truly understand what it means to have neighbours.”7 Context counts no matter the size. Our rivers are not yet streams. REFERENCES 1 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024. 2 Ashley Westerman, 2019, “Should rivers have same legal rights as humans? A growing number of voices say yes”, National Public Radio. npr.org/2019/08/03/740604142 3 August 2019. 3 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024. 4 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Wet Narratives: Architecture Must Recognise that the Future is Fluid’ in The Mother Tongue of Architecture: Selected writings of Kazi Khaleed Ashraf. ORO Editions and Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements, China: p. 251. 5 Ibid. 6 Adnan Morshed, 2017, ‘Modernism as Postnationalist Politics: Muzharul Islam’s Faculty ofFine Arts’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2017. 7 Salauddin Ahmed, 2024, “Design must not be a superimposed idea, but a logical one”, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 25 December 2024. #essay #bangladesh

ARCHITECTURENOW.CO.NZ

Essay from Bangladesh

Click to enlarge Housing build-ups in Dhaka. Image: Jeremy Smith 1 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 2 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 3 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 4 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 5 of 11 Old Dhaka and 45,000 people per square kilometre. Image: Jeremy Smith 6 of 11 Buses collage life on the roads. Image: Jeremy Smith 7 of 11 Lattice-work roofing of the informal settlements, viewed from Salauddin Ahmed’s Atelier Robin Architects studio. Image: Jeremy Smith 8 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 9 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 10 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 11 of 11 Architects Jeremy Smith and Murali Bhaskar go looking for water and hard-to-find buildings in what is already one of the world’s most populous mega-cities, Dhaka. Architecture here is rarely properly lost. Even now, as we navigate a way to higher-density living, we tend not to misplace buildings. There’s still the space to eye-spy our most wayward elevations. At worst, we might GPS a tricky driveway or pull out an Andrew Barrie map to pinpoint some retiring architecture. But what happens if you really diamond-up the density. At our country-wide 19-people-per-square-kilometre or even downtown Auckland’s sky-high 2500, you can see what’s coming and cities mostly plan out as planned. Teleport forward though to 45,000-people-per-square-kilometre and cities accelerate lives of their own. Here, anything and everything can be lost in the crowd, even buildings. So, on a 2024 invitation from the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements to share some Unfinished & Far Far Away adventures in “the toughest city in the world”,1 I pack some extra compassing in architect buddy Murali Bhaskar and go architectural orienteering in Dhaka. It’s hot hot; architecture can wait. We start by looking for water. This, after all, is the land of rivers. Following on from Aotearoa in 2017 being the first to give a specific river, Te Awa Tupua, legal rights, Bangladesh in 2019 became the first country to grant all of its some 700 rivers the same legal status that humans have.2 But the count varies. Protections readily miss smaller tributaries and, with all that water pouring out of the Himalayas and delta-ing into the Bay of Bengal, the land is accretional. The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith From the million or so starters in a newly independent 1971 Dhaka, today, it is the fourth-most-populated city in the world with somewhere near 25 million people. Whether for disaster relief, economics or just the bright lights, urbanisation draws more than 400,000 new residents annually to the city. Throw in some family time and, with Tokyo and Shanghai shrinking, Dhaka’s population is predicted to be an eyewatering 35 million by 2050 (and outnumbered only by Delhi and, in some books, Mumbai). When every possible place looks inhabited, it’s not just water that can quickly go to ground. Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, who heads the Bengal Institute, has some learned thinkers in tow in trying to keep pace architecturally. Throw in societal and climatic concerns, and questions about how contextualisation might operate at such speed and the inquiry takes global precedence. Kenneth Frampton, Rounaq Jahan, Suha Özkan, Shamsul Wares and, formerly, BV Doshi, sit on the advisory panel and have drawn other such worldly thinkers as Juhani Pallasmaa, David Leatherbarrow and, even, Peter Stutchbury from down our way to come experience an urban existence “symptomatic of the gravest environmental challenges”.3 It’s serious stuff. Ashraf researches “hydraulic flow in which horizontal and vertical movements of water may direct architectural and landscape formations”.4 This ‘form follows water’ mantra isn’t just free planning Le Corbusier’s ‘form follows function’ with some Charles Correa’s ‘form follows climate’ to connect to life outside, it’s a watery warning to the navigations quickly necessitating within our collective future. Ashraf’s timely prompt that “Embankment is a barrier. How can we deconstruct it”5 can be seen in the way we increasingly plan the separation of wet and dry in our cities. Main streets like Queen Street and Cambridge Terrace already run down streams and our remaining water edges risk becoming increasingly marginalised by infrastructure rising with the water. But the steering is different at density and Dhaka’s rapid growth has meant letting go of the controls with which we still understand cities to flow. As Ashraf puts it, “Dhaka builds furiously”. While we dutifully plan buildings as if crawling a length or two at the aquatic centre, architecture in Dhaka must high-dive into a torrent. Its buildings must learn to surface and really start kicking. Anything trying to hold ground risks being swept away. Dhaka has become a river. As if to university-entrance the swimming lesson to densification, we’ve arrived only a few months after an Indian helicopter plucked Bangladesh’s president from a student-led flood of unrest amongst civil rights and corruption demonstrations. We might think of universities as offering time for trying things on but, sink or swim, the students here now run the country. With the parliament dissolved, there’s no chance of us seeing inside Louis Kahn’s 1982 National Assembly Building, which, like many of Dhaka’s institutional buildings, took on something of a freshening in the coup. Remembering our government’s pre-departure, bold-italic travel advisory, we head out to practise avoiding street demonstrations and are rewarded with a fenced-off view of Kahn’s epic, which brought global architectural discourse to post-independent Bangladesh. No such authoritative access issues back at the university, where, amongst the student political murals, we visit Muzharul Islam’s 1953–1956 Fine Arts Institute. Islam introduced modernism to the then East Pakistan6 and, in testament, the school still functions as a school, with its external verandah circulation and louvred ventilating classrooms. The rallying extends to getting around with cars sporting dodgem bumpers. Travelling 10 kilometres takes an hour, a million beeps and some financial socialising out the windows. Public transport may be working hard to keep pace with the kinetic city but it starts at the back of the grid, as the panelwork to the buses visibly collage. Getting to where we want to go takes some effort. An above-ground subway system has been started but not finished and the folk enticingly riding on top of trains typically aren’t off looking for architecture. There’s the three-wheeled rickshaw option, of course: formerly pedalled but, in recent months, souped-up with the allowance of car batteries to the back axle. Even so, manoeuvring further than nearby takes more than any rider is up for. So, as we head out for lunch with architect Marina Tabassum and then beep beep beep out further to her extraordinary Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque in Dhaka’s northern expansion, we learn that having everything close helps. Neighbourhoods remain important in megacities. Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith The mosque deserves the full medley and gently uplifts as all great architecture does, be it for the community or off-the-street visitors like us. Marina Tabassum Architects is, of course, internationally renowned for its architectural stand against globalised buildings that are out of place and context, notably winning an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 and being selected to undertake the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion in London. With the site at 13 degrees to the axis of qibla in Mecca, Tabassum sits the mosque on a five-step plinth with a squared, ventilating brick jali and a circular ceilinged prayer space rotated off centre. In a lesson to building only what you need, the spaces between remain unroofed and the perimeter daylight illumination provides a diminished and equalling light to the prayer space. It needs no explanation: look up and there are constellations in the sky; look outwards and find community; look to the mihrab notching the outside wall and orientate to Mecca. Tabassum’s dive is splashless, for the mosque has self-navigated being enveloped by the city. The entry pond may have gone and the mihrab now reveals buildings rather than fields but the light still shines the way. Four hundred people take prayer several times a day within the inner circle, and the weekend Friday crowd spreads outwards to the borders and plinth. We are two days in at this point and our not-getting-lost-practice is going well. We meet architect Salauddin Ahmed whose Atelier Robin Architects studio and gallery in a former tannery building is so hidden away that it feels both lost and right at home. It’s surrounded by the latticing roofs of informal settlements and, remarkably, feels quiet and yet, genuinely, part of the city. No mean feat in a city, “living”, as Ahmed puts it, “as if this is the last day on earth”. Noise is life in Dhaka; Ahmed’s windows are open and the river is flowing. We talk the same language of architecture understanding existing context and needing to accommodate change in shorter and shorter time frames. Where I say “participate”, Ahmed terms “navigate” and without any sense of overseeing for there is just so much life in Dhaka. We mean the same thing and get there from very different landscapes. The next morning, we go where transport can’t. Old Dhaka’s alleyways require some extra eyes, so Ahmed calls in his friend, photographer Khademul Insan, who has lived this labyrinth. This is the densest part of Dhaka and there’s a lot in the air. “Wear this,” says Ahmed, passing a mask. “Otherwise, you’ll cough for four weeks.” It is deep. There’s so much WiFi that it strands like some kind of underworld sun-shading. Our service provider isn’t expecting this kind of roaming and we have no connection. If our collective Kiwi wayfinding skills might have fluked a way in, we certainly need leading out. As the lanes narrow, the industry broadens into some kind of Mad Max circular economy where everything of anything has value and the fires that keep these people afloat run continuously. Mercifully, it’s not raining or there’d be a different type of river afoot. Fifteen kilometres and all day later, we’ve walked to search for culturally significant mosques, houses, courtyards and schools. Some we locate; others, there’s just no finding. Maybe they are there, maybe they aren’t. Occasionally, there are scripts cautioning against graffiti or carving a name into the stonework at the risk of imprisonment, but there are few clues to any architectural history. In the pinch, buildings jostle to just about every possible place a building might go: on top, under, in front, behind. They infill courtyards, hang over laneways, squeeze into gaps, even penalising what’s left of a football field. Every seat is taken, literally. Whenever we find public space off the street, there are couples dating. There’s a lot of romance in 25 million. Eventually, we exit and finally see a river. I remember the swimming lessons are strictly metaphoric and look but don’t touch. You don’t need to get wet to learn how to swim. As Ahmed guides, and he speaks with Ashraf, Tabassum, Insan and experience to what we must remember in densifying our own cities. “I belong to one of the last generations that truly understand what it means to have neighbours.”7 Context counts no matter the size. Our rivers are not yet streams. REFERENCES 1 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024. 2 Ashley Westerman, 2019, “Should rivers have same legal rights as humans? A growing number of voices say yes”, National Public Radio. npr.org/2019/08/03/740604142 3 August 2019. 3 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024. 4 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Wet Narratives: Architecture Must Recognise that the Future is Fluid’ in The Mother Tongue of Architecture: Selected writings of Kazi Khaleed Ashraf. ORO Editions and Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements, China: p. 251. 5 Ibid. 6 Adnan Morshed, 2017, ‘Modernism as Postnationalist Politics: Muzharul Islam’s Faculty ofFine Arts (1953–1956)’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2017. 7 Salauddin Ahmed, 2024, “Design must not be a superimposed idea, but a logical one”, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 25 December 2024.

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Unity paylaşılan bir bağlantı

2025-05-24 04:32:19 ·

Creepy, cute, compelling: The recipe for smash hit, Cult of the Lamb

Cult of the Lamb was a breakout success this summer, selling more than a million copies in its first week. Through its unique premise, Massive Monster’s dungeon-crawling, base-building, rogue-lite hybrid casts you in the role of a possessed, cult-leading lamb.Your mission? Indoctrinate woodland creatures, perform dark rituals, and hunt down bosses – all to appease an eldritch being, The One Who Waits, and become leader of “the one true cult.” A major factor in the game’s success is its compelling gameplay loop, which reviewers have described as “addictive,” “satisfying,” and even “perfect.”We sat down with Jay Armstrong, Massive Monster’s design director and lead programmer, to discuss how the team chose which genres to combine, what they did to balance a two-genres-in-one-game approach, and their top tips for overcoming challenges to keep development focused.The Massive Monster team – Jay Armstrong, Julian Wilton, and James “Jimp” Pearmain– is spread out across Singapore, Australia, and the UK. How did you all meet and start making games together?We all started making Flash games individually. We first met through the Flash game scene, forums, and events. We all worked together on different games, and when Flash games fell away, we decided to team up and make games for desktop and console.The first game that Julian and I created together was called Super Adventure Pals, and almost exactly 10 years later, we released Cult of the Lamb. So the three of us have been collaborating together for a long time.What was your source of inspiration for Cult of the Lamb? How did you develop the idea?Funny enough, the cult stuff didn’t come until much later. The game actually started with the idea of combining the genres of a roguelike with a colony sim/base builder. I noticed that games like RimWorld and Enter the Gungeon created so many interesting emergent narratives – stories that spring out of the game’s mechanics – that made it so everyone’s experience with the game was unique. I was excited about the idea of combining those two genres to create something that would become more than the sum of its parts, so I created a prototype that I planned to show to the other guys at an upcoming PAX.When I took it to Jimp and Julian, they loved it, but we immediately found that it was a really hard game to pitch when talking to publishers. At this point we still hadn’t come up with the cult theme. We knew we had to figure out a way to market the game in one sentence. We needed a player fantasy we could explain easily and that people would immediately understand. It took around nine months of experimenting with different themes before we finally landed on the idea of the cult.Once we had that, everything for the next three years was about making sure we kept hitting the “promise” the game’s theme created. The game had to feel like you were leading a cult, which meant we had to have rituals and sermons. But figuring out how to make those game mechanics took a lot of iteration and experimentation. We got very used to cutting ideas that didn’t achieve that goal, and “listening” to what the game wanted to be. Having a clear goal for what we wanted the experience to be meant we were all on the same page, and it was obvious when something was or wasn’t working.Cult of the Lamb is your first Unity project. Why did you choose Unity to develop it?Yes, Cult of the Lamb is our first Unity project. We chose it because of the great tools it offers for iterating, quick testing, and allowing designers to lay out levels. In the past, we’ve created our own editors, but the tools that are available for Unity and on the Asset Store are such timesavers. We also have the flexibility of building whatever tools we want for ourselves.How did Unity enable you to manage the game’s combination of 2D and 3D assets to create a 2.5D look?One of the reasons we picked the 2.5D look was because we were moving to Unity and it was our first time using a 3D engine. It felt like a waste if we just stuck to normal 2D, so we decided to take advantage of that extra axis!It was great being able to move the sprites around and create faux-3D structures; to use the Editor to decide on the best angles for our characters and the camera.Why did you choose the top-down perspective? What were some challenges you encountered during implementation and how did you solve them?The main problem with our perspective was that we had to keep the camera relatively fixed, which restricted our options for combat and the placement of things in the world. While it is sort of top-down, we had to arrange things so that the important stuff was all at the top/back of the screen. It was fine once we got the hang of it: Creating restrictions forces you to come up with creative solutions.What benefit did Unity’s lighting provide for creating the look of Cult of the Lamb?The lighting is such a big part of what makes Cult of the Lamb look so cool! We had some support from our extremely talented friend Jonathan Swanson, who helped us set up all the lighting. Because of our 2.5D setup, we had to create some custom solutions. But once we got it all up and running, it really elevated the game massively.Did your artists work directly in Unity?Yes, everyone was working directly on the project at once, which saved us huge amounts of time. Having an artist or designer implement something directly is so great. This not only saves the programmers time, it also allows the artist or designer to get it looking exactly how they want it to.Back when we started in Flash, everything had to be implemented into the project by one person, and we’d send assets over email. This created a huge bottleneck. It’s such a relief to be able to put the tools in the hands of talented artists and let them do their thing!How did you iterate on what are essentially two different game concepts, while maintaining the scope of your project?It was definitely a challenge. Cult of the Lamb only works when both sides of the game feed into the other – when one side is broken or not as good as it should be, the whole game falls apart. It really didn’t come together until quite soon before the release. We just kept working as hard as we could and dragged the game kicking and screaming over the finish line.We still have loads of ideas for the game – but it just came to a point where we had to stop adding new stuff and focus on making it as cohesive as possible and the game loop itself as compelling as it could be. That’s where the real magic of the game is. We plan to keep adding more stuff to the game post release.How did you test features as you added them?Everyone on the team would do regular playtests. Later in development, our publisher helped us to connect with a focus group who gave us feedback. Ordinarily we would have exhibited the game to get player feedback, but due to COVID, we were essentially making this game alone in the dark. We had no idea what people would think of it!Thinking about the roguelike elements, how did you implement randomization? What was most difficult to balance here?Our team has a huge range of skill levels when it comes to gaming. We balanced “easy” to Julian, “medium” to me, and “hard” to Jimp.The other nice thing about dungeon crawlers is that you don’t really need the randomization to be very balanced. It’s actually more fun when you have a run where you get lucky, and sometimes you get really unlucky. It’s that variety that makes it fun!Balancing was mostly focused on enemy and boss HP against the level of your character’s starting weapon. Then there was experimentation with faith and hunger levels.We also have a lot of things under the hood of the game that adjust to the player if you’re struggling. For example, if you’re low on health, you’re much more likely to find a heart in the grass or to loot one from a chest.During our Twitch stream at GDC, you and the team talked about how taking advantage of the cult members is central to the game. How did you ensure that your players would feel like they were making difficult yet impactful choices when managing the cult?That was a decision we made very early on, and it pervades the entire DNA of the game. Really, it was part of almost every design decision we made.One thing that took us a while to figure out was how to make sacrificing a follower feel valuable. You originally just got gold for it, but it never felt valuable enough, so we knew we needed to make it more tempting for a player. That’s why we changed it to an instant level-up. Suddenly we found players were sacrificing their followers all the time!Another idea that we had from almost the beginning was being able to consume a follower to bring yourself back to life. That was originally a core mechanic of the game, but we decided to bring it in a bit later instead. Making leveled-up followers give more hearts is a great example – the cult members you care about more, and have invested in more, we make more tempting to kill. Basically, anything you care about, we try to make it tempting for you to do something horrible to it.What are the most important things you learned during the making of Cult of the Lamb that will impact how you approach your next project?Pick a theme and then create three design pillars; that will be how you fulfill the promise that the theme creates. For example, if it’s a game about cults, then you need a sacrifice ritual – even if you don’t yet know how it will be used mechanically.Once you have those pillars, absolutely every design decision must directly feed back into them. You might come up with a really cool idea, but if it doesn’t support that pillar, then you have to scrap it or your game will become unfocused.Start with a concept – it’s X meets Y – don’t just make another metroidvania or Stardew Valley clone. Even if you do decide to make another metroidvania, do something to elevate it so that you’re offering something new and exciting. It will make things much easier to get your foot in the door with publishers, socials, and press. Plus, while it might be more demanding, it’s incredibly rewarding to challenge yourself.Cult of the Lamb is available now on Nintendo Switch™, PC, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Follow @MassiveMonsters on Twitter for updates and visit our Indie Innovation hub for more stories featuring Unity creators making waves in the games industry.Answers attributed to Jay Armstrong.Nintendo Switch is a registered trademark of Nintendo.
#creepy #cute #compelling #recipe #smash

Creepy, cute, compelling: The recipe for smash hit, Cult of the Lamb
Cult of the Lamb was a breakout success this summer, selling more than a million copies in its first week. Through its unique premise, Massive Monster’s dungeon-crawling, base-building, rogue-lite hybrid casts you in the role of a possessed, cult-leading lamb.Your mission? Indoctrinate woodland creatures, perform dark rituals, and hunt down bosses – all to appease an eldritch being, The One Who Waits, and become leader of “the one true cult.” A major factor in the game’s success is its compelling gameplay loop, which reviewers have described as “addictive,” “satisfying,” and even “perfect.”We sat down with Jay Armstrong, Massive Monster’s design director and lead programmer, to discuss how the team chose which genres to combine, what they did to balance a two-genres-in-one-game approach, and their top tips for overcoming challenges to keep development focused.The Massive Monster team – Jay Armstrong, Julian Wilton, and James “Jimp” Pearmain– is spread out across Singapore, Australia, and the UK. How did you all meet and start making games together?We all started making Flash games individually. We first met through the Flash game scene, forums, and events. We all worked together on different games, and when Flash games fell away, we decided to team up and make games for desktop and console.The first game that Julian and I created together was called Super Adventure Pals, and almost exactly 10 years later, we released Cult of the Lamb. So the three of us have been collaborating together for a long time.What was your source of inspiration for Cult of the Lamb? How did you develop the idea?Funny enough, the cult stuff didn’t come until much later. The game actually started with the idea of combining the genres of a roguelike with a colony sim/base builder. I noticed that games like RimWorld and Enter the Gungeon created so many interesting emergent narratives – stories that spring out of the game’s mechanics – that made it so everyone’s experience with the game was unique. I was excited about the idea of combining those two genres to create something that would become more than the sum of its parts, so I created a prototype that I planned to show to the other guys at an upcoming PAX.When I took it to Jimp and Julian, they loved it, but we immediately found that it was a really hard game to pitch when talking to publishers. At this point we still hadn’t come up with the cult theme. We knew we had to figure out a way to market the game in one sentence. We needed a player fantasy we could explain easily and that people would immediately understand. It took around nine months of experimenting with different themes before we finally landed on the idea of the cult.Once we had that, everything for the next three years was about making sure we kept hitting the “promise” the game’s theme created. The game had to feel like you were leading a cult, which meant we had to have rituals and sermons. But figuring out how to make those game mechanics took a lot of iteration and experimentation. We got very used to cutting ideas that didn’t achieve that goal, and “listening” to what the game wanted to be. Having a clear goal for what we wanted the experience to be meant we were all on the same page, and it was obvious when something was or wasn’t working.Cult of the Lamb is your first Unity project. Why did you choose Unity to develop it?Yes, Cult of the Lamb is our first Unity project. We chose it because of the great tools it offers for iterating, quick testing, and allowing designers to lay out levels. In the past, we’ve created our own editors, but the tools that are available for Unity and on the Asset Store are such timesavers. We also have the flexibility of building whatever tools we want for ourselves.How did Unity enable you to manage the game’s combination of 2D and 3D assets to create a 2.5D look?One of the reasons we picked the 2.5D look was because we were moving to Unity and it was our first time using a 3D engine. It felt like a waste if we just stuck to normal 2D, so we decided to take advantage of that extra axis!It was great being able to move the sprites around and create faux-3D structures; to use the Editor to decide on the best angles for our characters and the camera.Why did you choose the top-down perspective? What were some challenges you encountered during implementation and how did you solve them?The main problem with our perspective was that we had to keep the camera relatively fixed, which restricted our options for combat and the placement of things in the world. While it is sort of top-down, we had to arrange things so that the important stuff was all at the top/back of the screen. It was fine once we got the hang of it: Creating restrictions forces you to come up with creative solutions.What benefit did Unity’s lighting provide for creating the look of Cult of the Lamb?The lighting is such a big part of what makes Cult of the Lamb look so cool! We had some support from our extremely talented friend Jonathan Swanson, who helped us set up all the lighting. Because of our 2.5D setup, we had to create some custom solutions. But once we got it all up and running, it really elevated the game massively.Did your artists work directly in Unity?Yes, everyone was working directly on the project at once, which saved us huge amounts of time. Having an artist or designer implement something directly is so great. This not only saves the programmers time, it also allows the artist or designer to get it looking exactly how they want it to.Back when we started in Flash, everything had to be implemented into the project by one person, and we’d send assets over email. This created a huge bottleneck. It’s such a relief to be able to put the tools in the hands of talented artists and let them do their thing!How did you iterate on what are essentially two different game concepts, while maintaining the scope of your project?It was definitely a challenge. Cult of the Lamb only works when both sides of the game feed into the other – when one side is broken or not as good as it should be, the whole game falls apart. It really didn’t come together until quite soon before the release. We just kept working as hard as we could and dragged the game kicking and screaming over the finish line.We still have loads of ideas for the game – but it just came to a point where we had to stop adding new stuff and focus on making it as cohesive as possible and the game loop itself as compelling as it could be. That’s where the real magic of the game is. We plan to keep adding more stuff to the game post release.How did you test features as you added them?Everyone on the team would do regular playtests. Later in development, our publisher helped us to connect with a focus group who gave us feedback. Ordinarily we would have exhibited the game to get player feedback, but due to COVID, we were essentially making this game alone in the dark. We had no idea what people would think of it!Thinking about the roguelike elements, how did you implement randomization? What was most difficult to balance here?Our team has a huge range of skill levels when it comes to gaming. We balanced “easy” to Julian, “medium” to me, and “hard” to Jimp.The other nice thing about dungeon crawlers is that you don’t really need the randomization to be very balanced. It’s actually more fun when you have a run where you get lucky, and sometimes you get really unlucky. It’s that variety that makes it fun!Balancing was mostly focused on enemy and boss HP against the level of your character’s starting weapon. Then there was experimentation with faith and hunger levels.We also have a lot of things under the hood of the game that adjust to the player if you’re struggling. For example, if you’re low on health, you’re much more likely to find a heart in the grass or to loot one from a chest.During our Twitch stream at GDC, you and the team talked about how taking advantage of the cult members is central to the game. How did you ensure that your players would feel like they were making difficult yet impactful choices when managing the cult?That was a decision we made very early on, and it pervades the entire DNA of the game. Really, it was part of almost every design decision we made.One thing that took us a while to figure out was how to make sacrificing a follower feel valuable. You originally just got gold for it, but it never felt valuable enough, so we knew we needed to make it more tempting for a player. That’s why we changed it to an instant level-up. Suddenly we found players were sacrificing their followers all the time!Another idea that we had from almost the beginning was being able to consume a follower to bring yourself back to life. That was originally a core mechanic of the game, but we decided to bring it in a bit later instead. Making leveled-up followers give more hearts is a great example – the cult members you care about more, and have invested in more, we make more tempting to kill. Basically, anything you care about, we try to make it tempting for you to do something horrible to it.What are the most important things you learned during the making of Cult of the Lamb that will impact how you approach your next project?Pick a theme and then create three design pillars; that will be how you fulfill the promise that the theme creates. For example, if it’s a game about cults, then you need a sacrifice ritual – even if you don’t yet know how it will be used mechanically.Once you have those pillars, absolutely every design decision must directly feed back into them. You might come up with a really cool idea, but if it doesn’t support that pillar, then you have to scrap it or your game will become unfocused.Start with a concept – it’s X meets Y – don’t just make another metroidvania or Stardew Valley clone. Even if you do decide to make another metroidvania, do something to elevate it so that you’re offering something new and exciting. It will make things much easier to get your foot in the door with publishers, socials, and press. Plus, while it might be more demanding, it’s incredibly rewarding to challenge yourself.Cult of the Lamb is available now on Nintendo Switch™, PC, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Follow @MassiveMonsters on Twitter for updates and visit our Indie Innovation hub for more stories featuring Unity creators making waves in the games industry.Answers attributed to Jay Armstrong.Nintendo Switch is a registered trademark of Nintendo. #creepy #cute #compelling #recipe #smash

UNITY.COM

Creepy, cute, compelling: The recipe for smash hit, Cult of the Lamb

Cult of the Lamb was a breakout success this summer, selling more than a million copies in its first week. Through its unique premise, Massive Monster’s dungeon-crawling, base-building, rogue-lite hybrid casts you in the role of a possessed, cult-leading lamb.Your mission? Indoctrinate woodland creatures, perform dark rituals, and hunt down bosses – all to appease an eldritch being, The One Who Waits, and become leader of “the one true cult.” A major factor in the game’s success is its compelling gameplay loop, which reviewers have described as “addictive,” “satisfying,” and even “perfect.”We sat down with Jay Armstrong, Massive Monster’s design director and lead programmer, to discuss how the team chose which genres to combine, what they did to balance a two-genres-in-one-game approach, and their top tips for overcoming challenges to keep development focused.The Massive Monster team – Jay Armstrong, Julian Wilton (creative director), and James “Jimp” Pearmain (art director) – is spread out across Singapore, Australia, and the UK. How did you all meet and start making games together?We all started making Flash games individually. We first met through the Flash game scene, forums, and events. We all worked together on different games, and when Flash games fell away, we decided to team up and make games for desktop and console.The first game that Julian and I created together was called Super Adventure Pals, and almost exactly 10 years later, we released Cult of the Lamb. So the three of us have been collaborating together for a long time.What was your source of inspiration for Cult of the Lamb? How did you develop the idea?Funny enough, the cult stuff didn’t come until much later. The game actually started with the idea of combining the genres of a roguelike with a colony sim/base builder. I noticed that games like RimWorld and Enter the Gungeon created so many interesting emergent narratives – stories that spring out of the game’s mechanics – that made it so everyone’s experience with the game was unique. I was excited about the idea of combining those two genres to create something that would become more than the sum of its parts, so I created a prototype that I planned to show to the other guys at an upcoming PAX.When I took it to Jimp and Julian, they loved it, but we immediately found that it was a really hard game to pitch when talking to publishers. At this point we still hadn’t come up with the cult theme. We knew we had to figure out a way to market the game in one sentence. We needed a player fantasy we could explain easily and that people would immediately understand. It took around nine months of experimenting with different themes before we finally landed on the idea of the cult.Once we had that, everything for the next three years was about making sure we kept hitting the “promise” the game’s theme created. The game had to feel like you were leading a cult, which meant we had to have rituals and sermons. But figuring out how to make those game mechanics took a lot of iteration and experimentation. We got very used to cutting ideas that didn’t achieve that goal, and “listening” to what the game wanted to be. Having a clear goal for what we wanted the experience to be meant we were all on the same page, and it was obvious when something was or wasn’t working.Cult of the Lamb is your first Unity project. Why did you choose Unity to develop it?Yes, Cult of the Lamb is our first Unity project. We chose it because of the great tools it offers for iterating, quick testing, and allowing designers to lay out levels. In the past, we’ve created our own editors, but the tools that are available for Unity and on the Asset Store are such timesavers. We also have the flexibility of building whatever tools we want for ourselves.How did Unity enable you to manage the game’s combination of 2D and 3D assets to create a 2.5D look?One of the reasons we picked the 2.5D look was because we were moving to Unity and it was our first time using a 3D engine. It felt like a waste if we just stuck to normal 2D, so we decided to take advantage of that extra axis!It was great being able to move the sprites around and create faux-3D structures; to use the Editor to decide on the best angles for our characters and the camera.Why did you choose the top-down perspective? What were some challenges you encountered during implementation and how did you solve them?The main problem with our perspective was that we had to keep the camera relatively fixed, which restricted our options for combat and the placement of things in the world. While it is sort of top-down, we had to arrange things so that the important stuff was all at the top/back of the screen. It was fine once we got the hang of it: Creating restrictions forces you to come up with creative solutions.What benefit did Unity’s lighting provide for creating the look of Cult of the Lamb?The lighting is such a big part of what makes Cult of the Lamb look so cool! We had some support from our extremely talented friend Jonathan Swanson, who helped us set up all the lighting. Because of our 2.5D setup, we had to create some custom solutions. But once we got it all up and running, it really elevated the game massively.Did your artists work directly in Unity?Yes, everyone was working directly on the project at once, which saved us huge amounts of time. Having an artist or designer implement something directly is so great. This not only saves the programmers time, it also allows the artist or designer to get it looking exactly how they want it to.Back when we started in Flash, everything had to be implemented into the project by one person, and we’d send assets over email. This created a huge bottleneck. It’s such a relief to be able to put the tools in the hands of talented artists and let them do their thing!How did you iterate on what are essentially two different game concepts, while maintaining the scope of your project?It was definitely a challenge. Cult of the Lamb only works when both sides of the game feed into the other – when one side is broken or not as good as it should be, the whole game falls apart. It really didn’t come together until quite soon before the release. We just kept working as hard as we could and dragged the game kicking and screaming over the finish line.We still have loads of ideas for the game – but it just came to a point where we had to stop adding new stuff and focus on making it as cohesive as possible and the game loop itself as compelling as it could be. That’s where the real magic of the game is. We plan to keep adding more stuff to the game post release.How did you test features as you added them?Everyone on the team would do regular playtests. Later in development, our publisher helped us to connect with a focus group who gave us feedback. Ordinarily we would have exhibited the game to get player feedback, but due to COVID, we were essentially making this game alone in the dark. We had no idea what people would think of it!Thinking about the roguelike elements, how did you implement randomization? What was most difficult to balance here?Our team has a huge range of skill levels when it comes to gaming. We balanced “easy” to Julian, “medium” to me, and “hard” to Jimp.The other nice thing about dungeon crawlers is that you don’t really need the randomization to be very balanced. It’s actually more fun when you have a run where you get lucky, and sometimes you get really unlucky. It’s that variety that makes it fun!Balancing was mostly focused on enemy and boss HP against the level of your character’s starting weapon. Then there was experimentation with faith and hunger levels.We also have a lot of things under the hood of the game that adjust to the player if you’re struggling. For example, if you’re low on health, you’re much more likely to find a heart in the grass or to loot one from a chest.During our Twitch stream at GDC, you and the team talked about how taking advantage of the cult members is central to the game. How did you ensure that your players would feel like they were making difficult yet impactful choices when managing the cult?That was a decision we made very early on, and it pervades the entire DNA of the game. Really, it was part of almost every design decision we made.One thing that took us a while to figure out was how to make sacrificing a follower feel valuable. You originally just got gold for it, but it never felt valuable enough, so we knew we needed to make it more tempting for a player. That’s why we changed it to an instant level-up. Suddenly we found players were sacrificing their followers all the time!Another idea that we had from almost the beginning was being able to consume a follower to bring yourself back to life. That was originally a core mechanic of the game, but we decided to bring it in a bit later instead. Making leveled-up followers give more hearts is a great example – the cult members you care about more, and have invested in more, we make more tempting to kill. Basically, anything you care about, we try to make it tempting for you to do something horrible to it.What are the most important things you learned during the making of Cult of the Lamb that will impact how you approach your next project?Pick a theme and then create three design pillars; that will be how you fulfill the promise that the theme creates. For example, if it’s a game about cults, then you need a sacrifice ritual – even if you don’t yet know how it will be used mechanically.Once you have those pillars, absolutely every design decision must directly feed back into them. You might come up with a really cool idea, but if it doesn’t support that pillar, then you have to scrap it or your game will become unfocused.Start with a concept – it’s X meets Y – don’t just make another metroidvania or Stardew Valley clone. Even if you do decide to make another metroidvania, do something to elevate it so that you’re offering something new and exciting. It will make things much easier to get your foot in the door with publishers, socials, and press. Plus, while it might be more demanding, it’s incredibly rewarding to challenge yourself.Cult of the Lamb is available now on Nintendo Switch™, PC, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Follow @MassiveMonsters on Twitter for updates and visit our Indie Innovation hub for more stories featuring Unity creators making waves in the games industry.Answers attributed to Jay Armstrong.Nintendo Switch is a registered trademark of Nintendo.

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2025-05-23 16:55:35 ·

5 easy ways to instantly improve your soundbar's audio (and they're free)

Kerry Wan/ZDNETSoundbars are gaining in popularity because of their sleek design and ability to provide an ample boost in audio quality compared to built-in TV speakers. Even with their plug-and-play nature, you can make a few modifications to help unleash the best possible sound quality. Also: This Amazon Fire TV soundbar upgraded my home entertainment without breaking the bankWhether you're new to soundbar setups or a self-proclaimed audiophile, familiarizing yourself with some key settings can take your viewing and listening experience to new heights. Read on for five pointers on how to optimize your soundbar's performance. 1. Placement and acoustics It may sound obvious, but where you place your soundbar is a major factor. For the most balanced sound, position the soundbar directly below your TV, centered and parallel to the screen. Mounting a soundbar above your screen is also an option, but the ideal height placement for ultimate clarity is at or near ear level. Make sure your soundbar isn't obstructed by furniture or even decorative items that can block sound waves. Also: I changed 3 settings on my PS5 to significantly improve the performanceEach room has unique acoustics. Does your room have high ceilings or large windows? Are your floors hardwood or tile? If so, consider adding soft furnishings such as rugs and curtains to reduce reflections. You could also take it a step further by adding acoustic panels or diffusers to your area. Acoustic panels or diffusers can help manage sound reflections and create a more balanced audio environment.As noted by ZDNET contributor Artie Beaty, advanced soundbars like LG's S95TR go through a tuning process specific to the layout of your viewing area by using an AI room calibration feature. If your soundbar lacks such a feature, do some experimenting to find the sweet spot.Remember that most soundbars are designed to project sound directly toward the audience, so make sure the device is angled for optimal sound dispersion across all seating positions. Moving the soundbar a foot or so from your listening area or adjusting the angle just a few inches can noticeably improve or degrade the output. 2. Subwoofer location means everything Kerry Wan/ZDNETIf your soundbar has a subwoofer, place it on the floor, preferably in a corner or along a wall, to enhance bass response. The aim is to create a seamless blend between low-frequency effects and the rest of the audio spectrum. I've read about a music producer who would do a "crawling test" to pinpoint the best location. This involves playing some bass-heavy content and literally crawling around the room to find the spot with the most balanced bass output. Voila -- there's the best place to put your subwoofer. Also: What is spatial audio? Here's everything you need to knowSome soundbars come with a built-in subwoofer, and others allow you to connect an external subwoofer wirelessly or via a wired connection.In the absence of a subwoofer, and if it's in your budget, consider adding a unit like the SVS SB-1000 Pro. A more affordable option is the Klipsch Reference R-120SW. Hooking up a subwoofer can significantly enhance your audio experience with deeper, more impactful low-frequency effects, making you feel like you're part of the onscreen action. 3. Customizing your soundbar's equalizer and audio settings As I mentioned earlier, some soundbars feature automatic calibration systems that use a microphone to measure and adjust sound settings for your specific room. Many more of them come with various audio presets or EQ settings that you can adjust according to your tastes. Certain soundbars offer the flexibility to tailor audio settings for individual inputs, allowing you to fine-tune the sound quality based on whether you're watching shows, listening to music, or gaming. In any case, adjusting bass, treble, and other parameters can greatly improve audio quality based on your room's acoustics and your listening habits. Also, make sure to experiment with any advanced features, such as Virtual Surround Sound, Dialogue Enhancement, or Bass Boost, if available. Increasing the bass can add depth and power to action scenes, making explosions and other intense moments more dramatic and engaging. Raising the dialogue levels puts a focus on the center channel and midfrequencies, making vocals more distinct and easier to comprehend -- so you can actually understand what Yennefer of Vengerberg is whispering in The Witcher. Along those lines, check to see if your soundbar has a volume leveler. This featurelets you listen to content with greater consistency. You'll be reaching for the volume button on your remote much less frequently with volume leveling. 4. Check yourconnection Michael Gariffo/ZDNETYour soundbar is likely connected to your TV via an HDMI ARCor eARCport. This technology supports advanced 3D audio formats such as Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Sony 360 Reality Audio for a super-immersive surround-sound experience. Ideally, your soundbar will support HDMI-CECconnectivity, which lets you command devices connected through HDMI by using only one remote control. In this scenario, you can use your TV's remote to control the soundbar and, for instance, an added Blu-ray player. Also: What is EQ and why is it an important factor in improving sound?Integrating the operation of multiple devices into one is certainly my preference. Who wants three separate remotes sitting on their coffee table? Having all your devices plugged into the soundbar reduces clutter and avoids having to install a switch box. You can then easily switch between audio sources by changing the soundbar's input mode using your single remote. OK, this doesn't pertain to maximizing audio quality, but here's something that does. Compared with connecting your soundbar via Bluetooth, a wired connection remains the best method for transferring sound. Opting for a wired connection, such as HDMI or optical cables, guarantees a stable and lossless audio transmission. This allows the audio content to be heard as it was intended, without any degradation or disruptions caused by wireless signal interference or compression. Also, keep in mind that not all cables are created equal. Be sure to use a cable that supports high-res formats and has a higher bandwidth that can process more channels to support extra bass and tweeter speakers. 5. Updates are essential This one is short and sweet: check for software and firmware updates!Manufacturers often release updates that can improve your soundbar's performance and add new features. Regularly installing updates ensures your soundbar benefits from the latest enhancements and fixes, and squashes bugs that can corrupt sound quality. Also: Your TV's USB port has hidden superpowers: 5 benefits you're not taking advantage ofWith these simple tips, you can maximize your soundbar's performance and enjoy a richer, more immersive audio experience. Proper placement, room acoustics optimization, and thoughtfully adjusting your settings will surely elevate your listening experience for streaming. Whether you're watching action-packed blockbusters or rocking out to your favorite tunes, your soundbar will be ready to deliver exceptional audio quality. This article was originally published on April 28, 2025, and was updated on May 23, 2025.Looking for the next best product? Get expert reviews and editor favorites with ZDNET Recommends.Featured reviews
#easy #ways #instantly #improve #your

5 easy ways to instantly improve your soundbar's audio (and they're free)
Kerry Wan/ZDNETSoundbars are gaining in popularity because of their sleek design and ability to provide an ample boost in audio quality compared to built-in TV speakers. Even with their plug-and-play nature, you can make a few modifications to help unleash the best possible sound quality. Also: This Amazon Fire TV soundbar upgraded my home entertainment without breaking the bankWhether you're new to soundbar setups or a self-proclaimed audiophile, familiarizing yourself with some key settings can take your viewing and listening experience to new heights. Read on for five pointers on how to optimize your soundbar's performance. 1. Placement and acoustics It may sound obvious, but where you place your soundbar is a major factor. For the most balanced sound, position the soundbar directly below your TV, centered and parallel to the screen. Mounting a soundbar above your screen is also an option, but the ideal height placement for ultimate clarity is at or near ear level. Make sure your soundbar isn't obstructed by furniture or even decorative items that can block sound waves. Also: I changed 3 settings on my PS5 to significantly improve the performanceEach room has unique acoustics. Does your room have high ceilings or large windows? Are your floors hardwood or tile? If so, consider adding soft furnishings such as rugs and curtains to reduce reflections. You could also take it a step further by adding acoustic panels or diffusers to your area. Acoustic panels or diffusers can help manage sound reflections and create a more balanced audio environment.As noted by ZDNET contributor Artie Beaty, advanced soundbars like LG's S95TR go through a tuning process specific to the layout of your viewing area by using an AI room calibration feature. If your soundbar lacks such a feature, do some experimenting to find the sweet spot.Remember that most soundbars are designed to project sound directly toward the audience, so make sure the device is angled for optimal sound dispersion across all seating positions. Moving the soundbar a foot or so from your listening area or adjusting the angle just a few inches can noticeably improve or degrade the output. 2. Subwoofer location means everything Kerry Wan/ZDNETIf your soundbar has a subwoofer, place it on the floor, preferably in a corner or along a wall, to enhance bass response. The aim is to create a seamless blend between low-frequency effects and the rest of the audio spectrum. I've read about a music producer who would do a "crawling test" to pinpoint the best location. This involves playing some bass-heavy content and literally crawling around the room to find the spot with the most balanced bass output. Voila -- there's the best place to put your subwoofer. Also: What is spatial audio? Here's everything you need to knowSome soundbars come with a built-in subwoofer, and others allow you to connect an external subwoofer wirelessly or via a wired connection.In the absence of a subwoofer, and if it's in your budget, consider adding a unit like the SVS SB-1000 Pro. A more affordable option is the Klipsch Reference R-120SW. Hooking up a subwoofer can significantly enhance your audio experience with deeper, more impactful low-frequency effects, making you feel like you're part of the onscreen action. 3. Customizing your soundbar's equalizer and audio settings As I mentioned earlier, some soundbars feature automatic calibration systems that use a microphone to measure and adjust sound settings for your specific room. Many more of them come with various audio presets or EQ settings that you can adjust according to your tastes. Certain soundbars offer the flexibility to tailor audio settings for individual inputs, allowing you to fine-tune the sound quality based on whether you're watching shows, listening to music, or gaming. In any case, adjusting bass, treble, and other parameters can greatly improve audio quality based on your room's acoustics and your listening habits. Also, make sure to experiment with any advanced features, such as Virtual Surround Sound, Dialogue Enhancement, or Bass Boost, if available. Increasing the bass can add depth and power to action scenes, making explosions and other intense moments more dramatic and engaging. Raising the dialogue levels puts a focus on the center channel and midfrequencies, making vocals more distinct and easier to comprehend -- so you can actually understand what Yennefer of Vengerberg is whispering in The Witcher. Along those lines, check to see if your soundbar has a volume leveler. This featurelets you listen to content with greater consistency. You'll be reaching for the volume button on your remote much less frequently with volume leveling. 4. Check yourconnection Michael Gariffo/ZDNETYour soundbar is likely connected to your TV via an HDMI ARCor eARCport. This technology supports advanced 3D audio formats such as Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Sony 360 Reality Audio for a super-immersive surround-sound experience. Ideally, your soundbar will support HDMI-CECconnectivity, which lets you command devices connected through HDMI by using only one remote control. In this scenario, you can use your TV's remote to control the soundbar and, for instance, an added Blu-ray player. Also: What is EQ and why is it an important factor in improving sound?Integrating the operation of multiple devices into one is certainly my preference. Who wants three separate remotes sitting on their coffee table? Having all your devices plugged into the soundbar reduces clutter and avoids having to install a switch box. You can then easily switch between audio sources by changing the soundbar's input mode using your single remote. OK, this doesn't pertain to maximizing audio quality, but here's something that does. Compared with connecting your soundbar via Bluetooth, a wired connection remains the best method for transferring sound. Opting for a wired connection, such as HDMI or optical cables, guarantees a stable and lossless audio transmission. This allows the audio content to be heard as it was intended, without any degradation or disruptions caused by wireless signal interference or compression. Also, keep in mind that not all cables are created equal. Be sure to use a cable that supports high-res formats and has a higher bandwidth that can process more channels to support extra bass and tweeter speakers. 5. Updates are essential This one is short and sweet: check for software and firmware updates!Manufacturers often release updates that can improve your soundbar's performance and add new features. Regularly installing updates ensures your soundbar benefits from the latest enhancements and fixes, and squashes bugs that can corrupt sound quality. Also: Your TV's USB port has hidden superpowers: 5 benefits you're not taking advantage ofWith these simple tips, you can maximize your soundbar's performance and enjoy a richer, more immersive audio experience. Proper placement, room acoustics optimization, and thoughtfully adjusting your settings will surely elevate your listening experience for streaming. Whether you're watching action-packed blockbusters or rocking out to your favorite tunes, your soundbar will be ready to deliver exceptional audio quality. This article was originally published on April 28, 2025, and was updated on May 23, 2025.Looking for the next best product? Get expert reviews and editor favorites with ZDNET Recommends.Featured reviews #easy #ways #instantly #improve #your

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5 easy ways to instantly improve your soundbar's audio (and they're free)

Kerry Wan/ZDNETSoundbars are gaining in popularity because of their sleek design and ability to provide an ample boost in audio quality compared to built-in TV speakers. Even with their plug-and-play nature, you can make a few modifications to help unleash the best possible sound quality. Also: This Amazon Fire TV soundbar upgraded my home entertainment without breaking the bankWhether you're new to soundbar setups or a self-proclaimed audiophile, familiarizing yourself with some key settings can take your viewing and listening experience to new heights. Read on for five pointers on how to optimize your soundbar's performance. 1. Placement and acoustics It may sound obvious (because it is), but where you place your soundbar is a major factor. For the most balanced sound, position the soundbar directly below your TV, centered and parallel to the screen. Mounting a soundbar above your screen is also an option, but the ideal height placement for ultimate clarity is at or near ear level. Make sure your soundbar isn't obstructed by furniture or even decorative items that can block sound waves. Also: I changed 3 settings on my PS5 to significantly improve the performanceEach room has unique acoustics. Does your room have high ceilings or large windows? Are your floors hardwood or tile? If so, consider adding soft furnishings such as rugs and curtains to reduce reflections. You could also take it a step further by adding acoustic panels or diffusers to your area. Acoustic panels or diffusers can help manage sound reflections and create a more balanced audio environment.As noted by ZDNET contributor Artie Beaty, advanced soundbars like LG's S95TR go through a tuning process specific to the layout of your viewing area by using an AI room calibration feature. If your soundbar lacks such a feature, do some experimenting to find the sweet spot.Remember that most soundbars are designed to project sound directly toward the audience, so make sure the device is angled for optimal sound dispersion across all seating positions. Moving the soundbar a foot or so from your listening area or adjusting the angle just a few inches can noticeably improve or degrade the output. 2. Subwoofer location means everything Kerry Wan/ZDNETIf your soundbar has a subwoofer, place it on the floor, preferably in a corner or along a wall, to enhance bass response. The aim is to create a seamless blend between low-frequency effects and the rest of the audio spectrum. I've read about a music producer who would do a "crawling test" to pinpoint the best location. This involves playing some bass-heavy content and literally crawling around the room to find the spot with the most balanced bass output. Voila -- there's the best place to put your subwoofer. Also: What is spatial audio? Here's everything you need to knowSome soundbars come with a built-in subwoofer, and others allow you to connect an external subwoofer wirelessly or via a wired connection. (More on this later.) In the absence of a subwoofer, and if it's in your budget, consider adding a unit like the SVS SB-1000 Pro. A more affordable option is the Klipsch Reference R-120SW. Hooking up a subwoofer can significantly enhance your audio experience with deeper, more impactful low-frequency effects, making you feel like you're part of the onscreen action. 3. Customizing your soundbar's equalizer and audio settings As I mentioned earlier, some soundbars feature automatic calibration systems that use a microphone to measure and adjust sound settings for your specific room. Many more of them come with various audio presets or EQ settings that you can adjust according to your tastes. Certain soundbars offer the flexibility to tailor audio settings for individual inputs, allowing you to fine-tune the sound quality based on whether you're watching shows, listening to music, or gaming. In any case, adjusting bass, treble, and other parameters can greatly improve audio quality based on your room's acoustics and your listening habits. Also, make sure to experiment with any advanced features, such as Virtual Surround Sound, Dialogue Enhancement, or Bass Boost, if available. Increasing the bass can add depth and power to action scenes, making explosions and other intense moments more dramatic and engaging. Raising the dialogue levels puts a focus on the center channel and midfrequencies, making vocals more distinct and easier to comprehend -- so you can actually understand what Yennefer of Vengerberg is whispering in The Witcher. Along those lines, check to see if your soundbar has a volume leveler. This feature (which can be turned on and off) lets you listen to content with greater consistency. You'll be reaching for the volume button on your remote much less frequently with volume leveling. 4. Check your (HDMI) connection Michael Gariffo/ZDNETYour soundbar is likely connected to your TV via an HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) or eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel) port. This technology supports advanced 3D audio formats such as Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Sony 360 Reality Audio for a super-immersive surround-sound experience. Ideally, your soundbar will support HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) connectivity, which lets you command devices connected through HDMI by using only one remote control. In this scenario, you can use your TV's remote to control the soundbar and, for instance, an added Blu-ray player. Also: What is EQ and why is it an important factor in improving sound?Integrating the operation of multiple devices into one is certainly my preference. Who wants three separate remotes sitting on their coffee table? Having all your devices plugged into the soundbar reduces clutter and avoids having to install a switch box. You can then easily switch between audio sources by changing the soundbar's input mode using your single remote. OK, this doesn't pertain to maximizing audio quality, but here's something that does. Compared with connecting your soundbar via Bluetooth, a wired connection remains the best method for transferring sound. Opting for a wired connection, such as HDMI or optical cables, guarantees a stable and lossless audio transmission. This allows the audio content to be heard as it was intended, without any degradation or disruptions caused by wireless signal interference or compression. Also, keep in mind that not all cables are created equal. Be sure to use a cable that supports high-res formats and has a higher bandwidth that can process more channels to support extra bass and tweeter speakers. 5. Updates are essential This one is short and sweet: check for software and firmware updates! (This, by the way, is essential for any device.) Manufacturers often release updates that can improve your soundbar's performance and add new features. Regularly installing updates ensures your soundbar benefits from the latest enhancements and fixes, and squashes bugs that can corrupt sound quality. Also: Your TV's USB port has hidden superpowers: 5 benefits you're not taking advantage ofWith these simple tips, you can maximize your soundbar's performance and enjoy a richer, more immersive audio experience. Proper placement, room acoustics optimization, and thoughtfully adjusting your settings will surely elevate your listening experience for streaming. Whether you're watching action-packed blockbusters or rocking out to your favorite tunes, your soundbar will be ready to deliver exceptional audio quality. This article was originally published on April 28, 2025, and was updated on May 23, 2025.Looking for the next best product? Get expert reviews and editor favorites with ZDNET Recommends.Featured reviews

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2025-05-22 20:01:30 ·

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

Pros
Impressive visual upgradeMemorable quest linesDLC is includedUnintentionally hilarious moments

Cons
Bugs, new and oldDungeons lack variety

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Specs

ESRB Rating
M for Mature

Games Genre
RPG

Games Platform
PC

Games Platform
PlayStation 5

Games Platform
Xbox Series S

Games Platform
Xbox Series X

All Specs

It's been 14 years since Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim debuted, and since then, there have been seven unique releases of the seminal open-world RPG. Its predecessor, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, has not been so lucky, left behind to languish in its original form on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3—until now. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remasteredis a visual update of one of the most important RPGs ever made. It gives the nearly 20-year-old title a much-deserved facelift thanks to Unreal Engine 5—and for better or worse, it preserves everything that made the game iconic. Nearly two decades in, Oblivion remains a highly enjoyable RPG that appeals to newcomers and veterans alike, earning it our Editors’ Choice award. What's New in Oblivion Remastered?"Find him, and close shut the doors of Oblivion." Those were the final words uttered by Emperor Uriel Septum—played by none other than Star Trek's Patrick Stewart—before an assassin leaped out of the shadows to cut him down. That not only capped Elder Scrolls IV's tutorial and began the game in earnest, but also kick-started my Elder Scrolls love nearly 20 years ago. At the time, open-world games were dominated by urban, Grand Theft Auto-like titles, so The Elder Scrolls IV was my first experience with a fantasy realm cut from that template. Even after hours of fast traveling, horseback riding, and slowly jogging from point A to point B, there were more quests to find, gear to loot, and havoc to wreak. Oblivion was rough around the edges, but it touched me in a way that contemporary Bethesda releases, such as Fallout 4, Skyrim, and Starfield, do not.I was surprised by how much Oblivion was ingrained in my brain when I loaded up the remaster on my PlayStation 5. I was also surprised by how much of that original title remains in the new version. From the Lord of the Rings-esque opening track to the weird, center-of-the-screen zoom that frames every conversation, it's immediately apparent that 2025's Oblivion Remastered is nearly the same game as the 2006 release, albeit wrapped in an Unreal Engine shell.That's not to say that nothing has changed, and Oblivion Remastered's new coat of paint comes with art direction shifts that may not resonate with fans of the original. Upon stepping out of the Imperial Sewers and into the world of Cyrodiil, I immediately noticed that the high-contrast green hills I remembered were now muted and shaded more realistically. This gives Oblivion Remastered some visual inconsistencies, as some outfits and characters look noticeably dull. But for every ugly NPC, I found a gorgeous Aurora Borealis stretched across the night sky, or stared at the shadows dancing behind a burning torch illuminating a dark dungeon.I was also impressed by Oblivion Remastered's sound design, which preserves much of the original release's charm. The iconic score is just as I remember it, but most importantly, the fully voiced characters return. Performances from notable actors like Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart stand out, but the real stars are the voice actors who portray dozens of unique characters throughout Cyrodiil. They remind me of a community theatre doing medieval impressions at the local Renaissance Fair. I mean that with love. However, bizarre line deliveries and intonations make it hard not to laugh. Couple that with bugs and the less-than-stellar AI, and you'll encounter many bizarre interactions.In one instance, as I traveled to an objective, I spotted an elf running across the plains with her fist up, punching every deer in her way. In another case, I had just closed an Oblivion Gate, and as soon as the guard captain congratulated me, he became disgruntled and told me to get out of his face. As I walked through the survivors' camp after a Daedra attack, three characters began talking over one another, spouting the same dialogue. Those moments helped solidify Oblivion as an unintended comedic masterpiece. As modern games become obsessed with movie-quality performances and hyper-realistic graphics, it's nice to step back and appreciate the jank that persists underneath Oblivion Remastered's Unreal Engine glow. That authenticity defines and elevates Oblivion for the same reasons an earnest B-movie becomes a cult classic.Recommended by Our EditorsThat said, Oblivion's open world, as new as it was at the time, wasn't the real reason I fell in love with it. Rather, I was obsessed with the idea of consequences. More so than being good or evil, Oblivion remembers your actions and responds accordingly. Killing the wrong person gets you kicked out of guilds, while other characters react to you negatively when you try to steal from them. Guards chase you down and toss you into jail. Quests become inaccessible if you take the wrong action. This made the game world feel alive in a way that many games do not. That was true in 2006, and it remains true in the 2025 remaster.GameplayThe beat-by-beat gameplay remains fun, if simple. Although Oblivion Remastered isn't as deep as Baldur’s Gate III, it has a wide variety of classes, races, and playstyles that enable player creativity. I played as a Redguard, a race that's proficient in Athletics, Blade, and Blunt weapons, and Light and Heavy Armor. Born under the Warrior sign, my character enjoyed increased strength and endurance. As a result, I approached almost every situation like a medieval Terminator.There's room to adjust your playstyle. So, if your heart desires a Battlemage for one situation and a stealth archer for another, you can easily pivot in one direction or the other. New gameplay changes claim to improve the combat, but I didn't notice much of a difference during testing. However, the improved controls, camera, and sprint are greatly appreciated.The guilds feature some of the more memorable quest lines. The Dark Brotherhood, one of my favorites, sees you murder targets, Hitman style. Meanwhile, the Thieves Guild tasks you with outwitting guards to steal high-profile gear, but only after you've done a certain amount of independent thievery. The Oblivion Remastered includes the two expansion packs, Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles, plus additional DLC packs. The Deluxe Edition includes a digital artbook and new quests, armor, and weapons.The main quest line, which focuses on finding a new heir to battle the evil pouring from giant Oblivion gates, is pretty forgettable. Dungeon crawling is also fairly trite, with caverns and temples that repeat ad nauseam. Although there's much to explore in Cyrodiil, it isn’t too exciting if it's not attached to a quest.Graphics and PerformanceI spent my review time playing on the PlayStation 5 Pro, and performance was mostly good. The game defaults to Performance mode and targets 60 frames per second. It didn't hit that target often, especially during large battles. However, switching to Quality mode was just awful. It tanked the frame rate and didn't add much visual fidelity. It's not worth the performance trade-off.Although I praise Oblivion Remastered's core for being authentically stuck in 2006, I must remove my nostalgia goggles for a moment to address the game's bugs and glitches. Many are funny, while others are game-breaking. Oblivion Remastered crashed multiple times during testing. In some cases, quest-giving characters refused to spawn or spawned in the wrong locations. On one occasion, I fell through the floor. A generous auto-save system prevents losing lots of progress, but it's still a pain to retread your last 20 minutes.Some may argue that glitches are part of the Oblivion experience, and in a way, they aren't wrong. However, there's no denying that annoying bugs from nearly 20 years ago should have been squashed by now.
#elder #scrolls #oblivion #remastered

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
Pros Impressive visual upgradeMemorable quest linesDLC is includedUnintentionally hilarious moments Cons Bugs, new and oldDungeons lack variety The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Specs ESRB Rating M for Mature Games Genre RPG Games Platform PC Games Platform PlayStation 5 Games Platform Xbox Series S Games Platform Xbox Series X All Specs It's been 14 years since Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim debuted, and since then, there have been seven unique releases of the seminal open-world RPG. Its predecessor, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, has not been so lucky, left behind to languish in its original form on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3—until now. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remasteredis a visual update of one of the most important RPGs ever made. It gives the nearly 20-year-old title a much-deserved facelift thanks to Unreal Engine 5—and for better or worse, it preserves everything that made the game iconic. Nearly two decades in, Oblivion remains a highly enjoyable RPG that appeals to newcomers and veterans alike, earning it our Editors’ Choice award. What's New in Oblivion Remastered?"Find him, and close shut the doors of Oblivion." Those were the final words uttered by Emperor Uriel Septum—played by none other than Star Trek's Patrick Stewart—before an assassin leaped out of the shadows to cut him down. That not only capped Elder Scrolls IV's tutorial and began the game in earnest, but also kick-started my Elder Scrolls love nearly 20 years ago. At the time, open-world games were dominated by urban, Grand Theft Auto-like titles, so The Elder Scrolls IV was my first experience with a fantasy realm cut from that template. Even after hours of fast traveling, horseback riding, and slowly jogging from point A to point B, there were more quests to find, gear to loot, and havoc to wreak. Oblivion was rough around the edges, but it touched me in a way that contemporary Bethesda releases, such as Fallout 4, Skyrim, and Starfield, do not.I was surprised by how much Oblivion was ingrained in my brain when I loaded up the remaster on my PlayStation 5. I was also surprised by how much of that original title remains in the new version. From the Lord of the Rings-esque opening track to the weird, center-of-the-screen zoom that frames every conversation, it's immediately apparent that 2025's Oblivion Remastered is nearly the same game as the 2006 release, albeit wrapped in an Unreal Engine shell.That's not to say that nothing has changed, and Oblivion Remastered's new coat of paint comes with art direction shifts that may not resonate with fans of the original. Upon stepping out of the Imperial Sewers and into the world of Cyrodiil, I immediately noticed that the high-contrast green hills I remembered were now muted and shaded more realistically. This gives Oblivion Remastered some visual inconsistencies, as some outfits and characters look noticeably dull. But for every ugly NPC, I found a gorgeous Aurora Borealis stretched across the night sky, or stared at the shadows dancing behind a burning torch illuminating a dark dungeon.I was also impressed by Oblivion Remastered's sound design, which preserves much of the original release's charm. The iconic score is just as I remember it, but most importantly, the fully voiced characters return. Performances from notable actors like Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart stand out, but the real stars are the voice actors who portray dozens of unique characters throughout Cyrodiil. They remind me of a community theatre doing medieval impressions at the local Renaissance Fair. I mean that with love. However, bizarre line deliveries and intonations make it hard not to laugh. Couple that with bugs and the less-than-stellar AI, and you'll encounter many bizarre interactions.In one instance, as I traveled to an objective, I spotted an elf running across the plains with her fist up, punching every deer in her way. In another case, I had just closed an Oblivion Gate, and as soon as the guard captain congratulated me, he became disgruntled and told me to get out of his face. As I walked through the survivors' camp after a Daedra attack, three characters began talking over one another, spouting the same dialogue. Those moments helped solidify Oblivion as an unintended comedic masterpiece. As modern games become obsessed with movie-quality performances and hyper-realistic graphics, it's nice to step back and appreciate the jank that persists underneath Oblivion Remastered's Unreal Engine glow. That authenticity defines and elevates Oblivion for the same reasons an earnest B-movie becomes a cult classic.Recommended by Our EditorsThat said, Oblivion's open world, as new as it was at the time, wasn't the real reason I fell in love with it. Rather, I was obsessed with the idea of consequences. More so than being good or evil, Oblivion remembers your actions and responds accordingly. Killing the wrong person gets you kicked out of guilds, while other characters react to you negatively when you try to steal from them. Guards chase you down and toss you into jail. Quests become inaccessible if you take the wrong action. This made the game world feel alive in a way that many games do not. That was true in 2006, and it remains true in the 2025 remaster.GameplayThe beat-by-beat gameplay remains fun, if simple. Although Oblivion Remastered isn't as deep as Baldur’s Gate III, it has a wide variety of classes, races, and playstyles that enable player creativity. I played as a Redguard, a race that's proficient in Athletics, Blade, and Blunt weapons, and Light and Heavy Armor. Born under the Warrior sign, my character enjoyed increased strength and endurance. As a result, I approached almost every situation like a medieval Terminator.There's room to adjust your playstyle. So, if your heart desires a Battlemage for one situation and a stealth archer for another, you can easily pivot in one direction or the other. New gameplay changes claim to improve the combat, but I didn't notice much of a difference during testing. However, the improved controls, camera, and sprint are greatly appreciated.The guilds feature some of the more memorable quest lines. The Dark Brotherhood, one of my favorites, sees you murder targets, Hitman style. Meanwhile, the Thieves Guild tasks you with outwitting guards to steal high-profile gear, but only after you've done a certain amount of independent thievery. The Oblivion Remastered includes the two expansion packs, Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles, plus additional DLC packs. The Deluxe Edition includes a digital artbook and new quests, armor, and weapons.The main quest line, which focuses on finding a new heir to battle the evil pouring from giant Oblivion gates, is pretty forgettable. Dungeon crawling is also fairly trite, with caverns and temples that repeat ad nauseam. Although there's much to explore in Cyrodiil, it isn’t too exciting if it's not attached to a quest.Graphics and PerformanceI spent my review time playing on the PlayStation 5 Pro, and performance was mostly good. The game defaults to Performance mode and targets 60 frames per second. It didn't hit that target often, especially during large battles. However, switching to Quality mode was just awful. It tanked the frame rate and didn't add much visual fidelity. It's not worth the performance trade-off.Although I praise Oblivion Remastered's core for being authentically stuck in 2006, I must remove my nostalgia goggles for a moment to address the game's bugs and glitches. Many are funny, while others are game-breaking. Oblivion Remastered crashed multiple times during testing. In some cases, quest-giving characters refused to spawn or spawned in the wrong locations. On one occasion, I fell through the floor. A generous auto-save system prevents losing lots of progress, but it's still a pain to retread your last 20 minutes.Some may argue that glitches are part of the Oblivion experience, and in a way, they aren't wrong. However, there's no denying that annoying bugs from nearly 20 years ago should have been squashed by now. #elder #scrolls #oblivion #remastered

ME.PCMAG.COM

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

Pros Impressive visual upgradeMemorable quest linesDLC is includedUnintentionally hilarious moments Cons Bugs, new and oldDungeons lack variety The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Specs ESRB Rating M for Mature Games Genre RPG Games Platform PC Games Platform PlayStation 5 Games Platform Xbox Series S Games Platform Xbox Series X All Specs It's been 14 years since Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim debuted, and since then, there have been seven unique releases of the seminal open-world RPG (including a voice-only version for Amazon Alexa). Its predecessor, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, has not been so lucky, left behind to languish in its original form on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3—until now. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered ($49.99, tested on PlayStation 5 Pro, also available on PC and Xbox Series X/S) is a visual update of one of the most important RPGs ever made. It gives the nearly 20-year-old title a much-deserved facelift thanks to Unreal Engine 5—and for better or worse, it preserves everything that made the game iconic. Nearly two decades in, Oblivion remains a highly enjoyable RPG that appeals to newcomers and veterans alike, earning it our Editors’ Choice award. What's New in Oblivion Remastered?"Find him, and close shut the doors of Oblivion." Those were the final words uttered by Emperor Uriel Septum—played by none other than Star Trek's Patrick Stewart—before an assassin leaped out of the shadows to cut him down. That not only capped Elder Scrolls IV's tutorial and began the game in earnest, but also kick-started my Elder Scrolls love nearly 20 years ago. (Credit: Bethesda Game Studios/PCMag)At the time, open-world games were dominated by urban, Grand Theft Auto-like titles, so The Elder Scrolls IV was my first experience with a fantasy realm cut from that template. Even after hours of fast traveling, horseback riding, and slowly jogging from point A to point B, there were more quests to find, gear to loot, and havoc to wreak. Oblivion was rough around the edges, but it touched me in a way that contemporary Bethesda releases, such as Fallout 4, Skyrim, and Starfield, do not.I was surprised by how much Oblivion was ingrained in my brain when I loaded up the remaster on my PlayStation 5. I was also surprised by how much of that original title remains in the new version. From the Lord of the Rings-esque opening track to the weird, center-of-the-screen zoom that frames every conversation, it's immediately apparent that 2025's Oblivion Remastered is nearly the same game as the 2006 release, albeit wrapped in an Unreal Engine shell.(Credit: Bethesda Game Studios/PCMag)That's not to say that nothing has changed, and Oblivion Remastered's new coat of paint comes with art direction shifts that may not resonate with fans of the original. Upon stepping out of the Imperial Sewers and into the world of Cyrodiil, I immediately noticed that the high-contrast green hills I remembered were now muted and shaded more realistically. This gives Oblivion Remastered some visual inconsistencies, as some outfits and characters look noticeably dull. But for every ugly NPC, I found a gorgeous Aurora Borealis stretched across the night sky, or stared at the shadows dancing behind a burning torch illuminating a dark dungeon.I was also impressed by Oblivion Remastered's sound design, which preserves much of the original release's charm. The iconic score is just as I remember it, but most importantly, the fully voiced characters return. Performances from notable actors like Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart stand out, but the real stars are the voice actors who portray dozens of unique characters throughout Cyrodiil. (Credit: Bethesda Game Studios/PCMag)They remind me of a community theatre doing medieval impressions at the local Renaissance Fair. I mean that with love. However, bizarre line deliveries and intonations make it hard not to laugh. Couple that with bugs and the less-than-stellar AI, and you'll encounter many bizarre interactions.In one instance, as I traveled to an objective, I spotted an elf running across the plains with her fist up, punching every deer in her way. In another case, I had just closed an Oblivion Gate, and as soon as the guard captain congratulated me, he became disgruntled and told me to get out of his face. As I walked through the survivors' camp after a Daedra attack, three characters began talking over one another, spouting the same dialogue. Those moments helped solidify Oblivion as an unintended comedic masterpiece. As modern games become obsessed with movie-quality performances and hyper-realistic graphics, it's nice to step back and appreciate the jank that persists underneath Oblivion Remastered's Unreal Engine glow. That authenticity defines and elevates Oblivion for the same reasons an earnest B-movie becomes a cult classic.Recommended by Our Editors(Credit: Bethesda Game Studios/ PCMag)That said, Oblivion's open world, as new as it was at the time, wasn't the real reason I fell in love with it. Rather, I was obsessed with the idea of consequences. More so than being good or evil, Oblivion remembers your actions and responds accordingly. Killing the wrong person gets you kicked out of guilds, while other characters react to you negatively when you try to steal from them. Guards chase you down and toss you into jail. Quests become inaccessible if you take the wrong action. This made the game world feel alive in a way that many games do not. That was true in 2006, and it remains true in the 2025 remaster.GameplayThe beat-by-beat gameplay remains fun, if simple. Although Oblivion Remastered isn't as deep as Baldur’s Gate III, it has a wide variety of classes, races, and playstyles that enable player creativity. I played as a Redguard, a race that's proficient in Athletics, Blade, and Blunt weapons, and Light and Heavy Armor. Born under the Warrior sign, my character enjoyed increased strength and endurance. As a result, I approached almost every situation like a medieval Terminator.(Credit: Bethesda Game Studios/PCMag)There's room to adjust your playstyle. So, if your heart desires a Battlemage for one situation and a stealth archer for another, you can easily pivot in one direction or the other. New gameplay changes claim to improve the combat, but I didn't notice much of a difference during testing. However, the improved controls, camera, and sprint are greatly appreciated.The guilds feature some of the more memorable quest lines. The Dark Brotherhood, one of my favorites, sees you murder targets, Hitman style. Meanwhile, the Thieves Guild tasks you with outwitting guards to steal high-profile gear, but only after you've done a certain amount of independent thievery. The Oblivion Remastered includes the two expansion packs, Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles, plus additional DLC packs (yes, that includes the infamous horse armor pack). The Deluxe Edition includes a digital artbook and new quests, armor, and weapons.(Credit: Bethesda Game Studios/PCMag)The main quest line, which focuses on finding a new heir to battle the evil pouring from giant Oblivion gates, is pretty forgettable. Dungeon crawling is also fairly trite, with caverns and temples that repeat ad nauseam. Although there's much to explore in Cyrodiil, it isn’t too exciting if it's not attached to a quest.Graphics and PerformanceI spent my review time playing on the PlayStation 5 Pro (Oblivion Remastered is PS5 Pro Enhanced), and performance was mostly good. The game defaults to Performance mode and targets 60 frames per second. It didn't hit that target often, especially during large battles. However, switching to Quality mode was just awful. It tanked the frame rate and didn't add much visual fidelity. It's not worth the performance trade-off.Although I praise Oblivion Remastered's core for being authentically stuck in 2006, I must remove my nostalgia goggles for a moment to address the game's bugs and glitches. Many are funny, while others are game-breaking. Oblivion Remastered crashed multiple times during testing. In some cases, quest-giving characters refused to spawn or spawned in the wrong locations. On one occasion, I fell through the floor. A generous auto-save system prevents losing lots of progress, but it's still a pain to retread your last 20 minutes.Some may argue that glitches are part of the Oblivion experience, and in a way, they aren't wrong. However, there's no denying that annoying bugs from nearly 20 years ago should have been squashed by now.

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