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Showing posts from May 16, 2021
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Weird West Review
In this alternate universe, the West was won by trying a bunch of ideas so crazy they just might work… and if they don’t, hitting the quick-load button to revert to an earlier save and trying something even crazier until you pull it off. Thanks to that freedom to experiment with its world as you explore, Weird West is one of those games that feels like a stealth and combat playground even as it tells five mostly serious, well-written stories with interesting decisions throughout and a thoughtful conclusion. And with so much ground to cover and replayability to investigate, it’s well worth putting up with some quirks and underwhelming loot. What ties Weird West’s plot together is a group of shadowy figures using a magical brand to force your character’s consciousness into the bodies of various unsuspecting people. It’s a clever play on the way so many games have us take control of a character who already exists in that world but still need to bring us up to speed on their identity: h...
Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader – How Did it Take This Long to Get a Warhammer CRPG?
It’s truly bizarre that across the nearly 30 years of Warhammer video games, we haven’t had a single one that attempted to channel the tabletop Warhammer experience by utilizing the genre that feels best suited to do so: CRPGs. But that’s all about to change, as Pathfinder developer Owlcats has been cooking up something to fill this void. During an extensive hands-off demo of Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader, I checked out its extremely chunky turn-based combat system, drowned in its plethora of dialogue options and social skill checks, and nodded approvingly at its lovingly faithful depiction of Warhammer’s morbid universe. While it’s still very early, so far this CRPG is shaping up to be everything I’ve wanted from a Warhammer video game. If you’ve ever played (or even glanced at) a game of Warhammer 40K, then you probably know it’s designed for a hyper-specific kind of nerd who loves calculations, large-scale drama, and an incredibly detailed world one could easily get lost in. Warham...
Resident Evil Village: Use These Speedrunning Tips to Beat the Game Fast
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Mass Effect 2: How to Perfectly Run the Final Mission
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Resident Evil Village: All Combinable Treasure Locations
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Mass Effect Legendary Edition Review Part 1: Mass Effect
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Unsurprisingly, EA’s 4K remaster of the first Mass Effect is a night-and-day difference from the 2007 original. One look at a side-by-side comparison tells you most of what you need to know about this upgrade: textures, character models, and effects have been retrofitted and everything runs at 60 frames per second or more, though animations show their age in places, especially on human faces. But to find out how this famed but notoriously uneven game plays in 2021, factoring in the gameplay tweaks in the Legendary Edition, I spent 30 hours on a full playthrough. Revisiting an RPG I hadn’t played since 2008 turned out to be a fantastic refresher on one of gaming’s best original science-fiction universes, and also a reminder of the mechanical weaknesses a lot of us were willing to overlook at the time because of how revolutionary Mass Effect was back then. In general, Mass Effect looks good at 4K. (I played on Xbox Series X .) Environments are a tad on the sparse side when it comes to ...
Paradox Reveals Victoria 3, A Long-Awaited Sequel to a Series That Hasn't Been Seen Since 2011
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Victoria 3 has become a meme and an urban legend in the strategy community over the last few years, as speculation has run rampant about when we'd get a proper sequel to 2011's Victoria 2 . The franchise sits between Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron , simulating the technological leaps, ideological movements, and political shifts that shaped the modern world from the Industrial Revolution right up to the eve of World War II. And from what I've seen so far, it looks more than worth the wait. While a lot of Paradox's other strategy games have come to resemble something more like a board game (Europa Universalis IV) or an RPG ( Crusader Kings 3 ), Victoria 3 is billing itself as a deep, less abstracted historical simulation. Using a system of POPs – Parts of Population – it represents all one billion people who lived on Earth in 1836, from a subsistence farmer in rural China to a loyal soldier in Prussia to a wealthy captain of industry in Pennsylvania. Most grand s...
The Last of Us 2 Director Explains Why Its Haptics Suddenly Feel Better
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Earlier this week, The Last of Us 2 received a free PS5 performance patch which allows owners of the next-gen console to run the game at 60 frames per second. Alongside a new PS5 patch, the game's co-director also confirmed that players might notice a change in the haptics when playing the game with a DualSense controller. Kurt Margenau explained in a Twitter thread today , detailing the new changes made to the DualSense following a software update released in April. Margenau explains that he gave feedback to the DualSense team to help "improve timing, intensity, and 'texture'" of haptics" when using the controller to play backward compatible titles to help provide a more authentic feel showcased in its predecessor, the DualShock 4. The DualShock 4 includes two different-sized rotating weights, whereas the DualSense includes two weights that can move forward and backward. Margenau explains how the DualSense is "almost like a speaker," as it can p...
Special Report: The Inside Story of Blizzard's Departures and a Company at a Crossroads
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The news came as a shock, but it also wasn’t exactly a surprise. One month ago, Jeff Kaplan announced that he would be leaving Blizzard . His departure ended a 19 year career at Blizzard in which he helped develop two of the most important games ever made — World of Warcraft and Overwatch. A beloved figure at Blizzard, Kaplan’s departure sparked an outpouring of emotion from fans and developers alike . "He was sincere when he bid the team farewell and let them know how proud he was of everything that we were all able to accomplish together and how confident he was in what a lot of us consider to be one of the greatest development teams in the industry," said Aaron Keller – who succeeded Kaplan as Overwatch 2 director — in an interview with IGN. "It was an emotional moment to hear that from someone who you knew meant it and believed it." But underneath the emotion of Kaplan’s departure was a more troubling narrative that had been brewing since at least 2018. If you’...
We Counted Every Time Ethan Winters' Hands Are Injured In RE Village
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As a first-person game, one of the most common things players see in Resident Evil Village is protagonist Ethan Winter's hands. They're also the part of Ethan that Capcom clearly has the least love for, or, perhaps the most love for destroying. Early, blurry glimpses at Ethan Winters’ hands comes across as knowing fore”arm”shadowing of the arduous trek that he’s about to undertake during Village's opening, and things only get worse from there. Fans aren’t going out on a limb when they claim just how often Ethan’s hands succumb to some terrible fate, and how miraculous each dose of medicine is as it patches him up. RE7 was only the beginning of the trauma, so we’ve racked up the digits for just how often Ethan’s digits meet a terrible fate in Resident Evil Village. Obviously, spoilers for the entire game lie ahead , so be sure to first check out our Resident Evil Village review if you haven’t started playing, or look into our RE Village guide if you need help finding some ...
Podcast: The Games We Hope to See at E3
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Welcome back to IGN Game Scoop!, the ONLY video game podcast! This week your Omega Cops -- Daemon Hatfield, Justin Davis, Seth Macy, and Nicholas Limon -- are discussing topics like Breath of the Wild 2, God of War, Final Fantasy 16, and more. And, of course, they play Video Game 20 Questions. The music in this episode is from Bonk's Adventure. Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service. Listen on: Apple Podcasts YouTube Spotify Stitcher Find previous episodes here! source https://www.ign.com/articles/game-scoop-626-the-games-we-hope-to-see-at-e3
Everything Announced During PDXCon Remixed
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PDXCon Remixed, the online and socially-distanced edition of Paradox Interactive's annual convention, didn't skimp on the big announcements. In addition to Crusader Kings 3's first big expansion and the long-awaited Victoria 3, we got a look at new stuff for Prison Architect, Empire of Sin, and even a tease for Hearts of Iron IV. Here's everything that was announced during today's event. Victoria 3 Announced Victoria 3, a grand strategy historical simulation set in the tumultuous century from 1836 to 1936, was the headlining act. You can read my full impressions , but in short, it looks pretty incredible. Simulating over a billion individual people spread across the entire earth, it's an era of revolutions both industrial and political. New systems like Diplomatic Plays and Interest Groups are designed to shift the focus away from pure military conquest and onto areas like politics and economics. I'm a big Paradox fan, and even with stiff competition this i...
Crusader Kings 3's First Major Expansion Adds A Full 3D Throne Room
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Paradox has announced the first full expansion for Crusader Kings 3, and it's going in a very different direction from its predecessor. Royal Court will add a new, full-screen throne room in which you can display treasures and interact with petitioners from across your kingdom. They're also bringing back the character inventory from Crusader Kings 2: Monks and Mystics, including culture-specific weapons that will be displayed on your character and used in animated duels. Most of Crusader Kings 2's big expansions focused on opening up or fleshing out a specific area, and the Crusader Kings 3: Northern Lords flavor pack , released earlier this year, felt like that kind of expansion. But going in such a different direction for the first major piece of new content seemingly speaks to a desire to lean into CK3's RPG aspects. Taking your eyes off the map and putting them more on characters and physical locations within the world is a major departure from Paradox's usual...
Using a Robotic 'Third Thumb' Can Change How Your Brain Works
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Using a robotic "third thumb" can change how your brain works, according to a new study published by University College London . Specifically, when using a third thumb the human brain begins to blend each finger rather than recognizing each as its own distinctive part of the hand. The UCL and University of Oxford researchers behind this study determined this by scanning the brains of those using a robotic third thumb before use and after five days of training. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2017/03/28/elon-musk-wants-to-put-a-chip-in-your-brain-ign-daily-fix"] "In our brains, each finger is represented distinctly from the others; among the study participants, the brain activity pattern corresponding to each individual finger became more similar (less distinct)," according to the UCL study. According to one of the researchers behind the study, Paulina Kieliba, this robotic third thumb study is the first to investigate the use of an augmentation d...
Resident Evil Village’s QA Department Really Didn’t Like the Game’s Combat At First
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Capcom’s Resident Evil Village launched earlier this month and is already breaking records on Steam . But according to a video released on the Resident Evil YouTube account, the game’s combat was far from perfect during development. The video — “ Making of Resident Evil Village – The Internal Struggle ” — shows how the development team struggled to get the game into a state that everyone was happy with as well as the impact that COVID-19 had on development. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/05/21/resident-evil-village-the-making-of-resident-evil-village-the-internal-struggle-video"] According to Director Morimasa Sato, “development came to a complete stop at Capcom due to the self-isolation caused by COVID-19”, and work on Village was halted completely for a whole month. Upon returning to the office, and having had a month to reflect, the whole team agreed that “they needed to fix the game”. When the team shared a demo version of the game with a focus group of pl...
Netflix Is Seemingly Hiring to Help it Make More Games
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It’s no secret that Netflix has been dominating the streaming market for a while now, even with strong competition from services like Disney+, but a new report suggests that it wants to get into the video game industry too. The Information 's report, citing "people familar with the situation", reveals that Netflix has been approaching key figures and industry veterans in the gaming industry in order to recruit an executive to oversee an expansion into video games. The suggested approach seems to be the Apple Arcade business model, which allows consumers to pay a fixed fee to access and stream a number of games via the service. Apparently, it hasn't yet been decided whether Netflix will look to develop games itself, or with external publishers. However, it has reportedly confirmed internally that these games will not include advertising. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/01/18/6-games-that-should-be-netflix-shows-up-at-noon"] Netflix has been ve...