Month: October 2020

The PS5 UI has been revealed by Sony.

The news arrives as part of a PlayStation blog post, which digs into the new console’s user experience and reveals a few new features coming to the PlayStation 5 when it launches next month.

One of the highlights of the new system is the Control Center, which provides “immediate access to almost everything you need from the system,” and can be summoned by pressing the PlayStation button on the new DualSense controller. From the Control Center you can see who is online, check the status of downloads, manage your controllers and more. A special 11-minute State of Play showcase launched alongside the blog post, providing an in-depth look at the PS5’s UX, which was designed with 4K TVs in mind.

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There’s also a brand new feature called Activities which lets players “discover new gameplay opportunities, go back to things you missed, jump directly into levels or challenges you want to play, and much more.” Activity cards can be accessed directly from the control centre, and some can be viewed picture-in-picture, meaning you won’t have to leave the game to see them.

An example is shown from Sackboy: A Big Adventure, where the user can open up an activity card relating to a level in progress to see objectives they still need to complete. From this menu, they can also find out the estimated playtime necessary to complete the level. If they wish to, players can press resume on an Activity to warp to the chosen level, and if the user is a PlayStation Plus subscriber, they can also get access to Game Help, where if they tap one of the objectives they can see screenshots and video clips that can be pinned to the screen and will guide them towards the solution.

Users will also be able to join parties and games hosted by their friends directly from the control centre, switching between games with pace thanks to the PS5’s SSD. A new media sharing system also allows you to dictate captions for screenshots before sharing them, and screenshots will be shrouded with a spoiler warning for players who may not have seen that part of the game yet.

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Sony also notes that they have “rebuilt the entire software stack form the console to the network” to make the user experience faster. “We believe the less time you spend waiting to interact with the system, the more time you will have to spend playing games,” the article explains.

In other PS5 news, we recently learned that the console’s cooling fan determined the size of the next-gen console.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

I’ve been living with the Xbox Series X for a few weeks now, and let me bottom-line it for you before getting into details: everything about this console so far screams how serious Microsoft is about not repeating the mistakes of the Xbox One generation. It is definitively more powerful than its primary competitor on paper, it’s not force-bundled with an accessory the market is going to reject (and thus it’s priced competitively), and in practice its design is compact and quiet and it really does beat down game loading times with its SSD drive. To top it off, Microsoft isn’t hyping up any TV- or multimedia-enhancing features either. This is a games machine, full stop. My biggest complaint about it so far is that I haven’t seen anything that’s really put all 12 teraflops to the test just yet.

More specifically, I’ve played a total of four optimized-for-Series-X games thus far, two old and two new: upgrades to Gears 5 and Gears Tactics, the latter of which is new to console players, as well as new releases Dirt 5 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon. That’s in addition to the handful of backward-compatible Xbox One and Xbox 360 games I threw at the machine during my first days with it. But for context, none of these are Xbox Series-only releases; all can be played on the Xbox One. That’s a running theme with the entire Xbox Series launch lineup, but I’ll get more into that in the proper Xbox Series X review in a few weeks.

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Dirt and Yakuza I covered separately, but in summary, Yakuza runs at a clean 4K, but it won’t wow your friends. Dirt, too, isn’t quite the showstopper you hope for out of a racing game launching with a new console. It hits 4K/60fps, but Forza accomplishes the same feat on the Xbox One X. Its next-gen trick is a 120hz option, which, while noticeable, isn’t as compelling of an upgrade as I’d hoped for.

As for the Gears duo, Tactics makes a nice transition over from PC, looking and running well at 4K/60fps with speedy loading times into missions. It’s the closest thing you’ll get to a new first-party exclusive at launch in Halo Infinite’s absence. Gears 5, on the other hand, has been continually updated since its release, and on Series X, it continues to shine. Versus multiplayer offers 120hz, and it feels more impactful here than in Dirt, presumably because you have more agency over the camera. To my eye, though, the difference between 60 and 120 isn’t as obvious as the difference between 30 and 60.

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Meanwhile, the Xbox Series X interface is nearly identical to what’s on Xbox One, albeit a bit quicker, snappier, and more animated. If you don’t like the Xbox One’s UI, this update is unlikely to win you over…until you try Quick Resume, which is literally a game-changer – a fast game-changer. Quickly hopping back and forth between several games, right where you left off, is absolutely fantastic, and a feature you’re never going to want to be without again.

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The same can be said of the Series X’s NVME SSD drive. It’s the biggest quality-of-life upgrade the Series X offers. It made an immediate and delightful first impression in my original preview of the console, and with more time, the best thing I can say about it is that you quickly take it for granted because it’s baked into everything. Don’t get the wrong idea – it doesn’t completely eliminate loading times – but they now seem to never get long enough as to be annoying anymore. And if you need more than the 820gb of usable hard drive space that’s left after OS and system files, the $220 Seagate 1TB expansion card looks exactly like memory card used to, but doubles your storage capacity while also giving all of the speed and performance benefits of the Series X’s fantastic internal SSD. It’s pricey, and you do have other options – notably, using a USB 3.1 external drive as a pack mule for games you’re not actively playing. It’s a cost-vs.-convenience tradeoff.

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The new Xbox Series X controller is a bit of a catch-22: it’s not a big change over last generation, but that’s because Microsoft has more or less already perfected their gamepad. I honestly don’t notice the slight ergonomic changes the Xbox team made, while nearly everything else is identical to its Xbox One counterpart. They’re a generation late with a dedicated Share button, but it’s here now, and the D-pad – long the Achilles heel of Microsoft’s controllers – is a hybrid of the standard Xbox One gamepad’s D-pad and the premium disc found on the Elite controller. It will be a net gain for owners of the former, while a step down for those who use the latter. And build quality seems fine, though mine has a spot on the right handle where the plastic gives and squeaks a bit. Just a one-off, most likely, but I’ll mention it anyway. Battery life seems every bit as good – make that fantastic – as the Xbox One gamepad with a pair of AA batteries.

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Finally, let’s talk about heat. I don’t have a laser thermometer to get actual numbers, but the Xbox Series X is definitely warmer than the Xbox One X under GPU load. I wouldn’t personally say it has a heat problem, though. To be fair, we won’t know for sure until these consoles start logging thousands of hours in thousands of real people’s homes, but so far I’m not worried. Does it exhaust warm air out of the top? Yes – it’s designed to. Cool air gets pulled in through the bottom, routed up through the chassis, and the warm air is released through the large vents on the top of the Series X. I pressed my hand into the top of the console and held it there after a long gaming session with Gears 5 and then Gears Tactics. It was warm, yes, and again, warmer than the Xbox One X, but it was hardly enough to make me want to pull my hand away out of discomfort. At idle, in fact, the air coming out of the Series X is barely lukewarm. It’s also whisper-quiet all the time.

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In my opinion, Microsoft’s hardware team has earned the benefit of the doubt here. Ever since the Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death scandal, the company has substantially and continuously improved. The bulky Xbox One was arguably over-engineered by design, with its large top cooling fan making sure thermals wouldn’t be a problem. And since then, the Xbox One S and One X took those thermal lessons and applied them to much smaller form factors, with no overheating complaints to speak of.

In all, this console speaks to Microsoft’s focus on building a serious games machine. The Xbox One X also gave off the same vibe, but from a generational perspective, it’s a focus I haven’t seen from Microsoft since the Xbox 360. Now the focus must shift to getting back to something else Microsoft did well in the 360 days: building great exclusive games. The good news there, though, is that once the company does that, it’s got a great console to run them on.

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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Microsoft has outlined the list of day-one launch games for the Xbox Series X and Series S, a host of new, next-gen games, as well as cross-gen releases spanning both Xbox exclusives and third-party, multiplatform offerings.

The full list, as revealed by Microsoft today, also denots what games support Smart Delivery, the process by which Xbox players can play the platform-specific versions of each game, even if they play across platforms, as well as what games will be available with Xbox Game Pass. The launch list includes:

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• Assassins Creed Valhalla (Smart Delivery)
• Borderlands 3 (Smart Delivery)
• Bright Memory 1.0 (Smart Delivery)
• Cuisine Royale (Smart Delivery)
• Dead by Daylight (Xbox Game Pass + Smart Delivery)
• Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition
• DIRT 5 (Smart Delivery)
• Enlisted
• Evergate
• The Falconeer (Smart Delivery)
• Fortnite
• Forza Horizon 4 (Xbox Game Pass + Smart Delivery)
• Gears 5 (Xbox Game Pass + Smart Delivery)
• Gears Tactics (Xbox Game Pass + Smart Delivery)
• Grounded (Xbox Game Pass + Smart Delivery)
• King Oddball
• Maneater (Smart Delivery)
• Manifold Garden (Smart Delivery)
• NBA 2K21
• Observer: System Redux
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Xbox Game Pass + Smart Delivery)
• Planet Coaster (Smart Delivery)
• Tetris Effect: Connected (Xbox Game Pass + Smart Delivery)
• The Touryst (Xbox Game Pass + Smart Delivery)
• War Thunder (Smart Delivery)
• Warhammer: Chaosbane Slayer Edition
• Watch Dogs: Legion (Smart Delivery)
• WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship (Smart Delivery)
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Smart Delivery)
• Yes, Your Grace (Smart Delivery)

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While the list does not include any brand-new Xbox first-party games, it does mark Gears Tactics’ arrival on console after its launch on PC earlier this year. It launches alongside Series X and S versions of existing Xbox games like Grounded, Gears 5, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and more. Plus, Xbox players at launch will get some console exclusives like the enhanced Tetris Effect: Connected, as well as Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which, while also on current-gen platforms, does not hit PS5 until March 2021.

And this list, of course, does not include the full list of games available for those who subscribe to Xbox Game Pass.

For more ahead of the Xbox Series X and Series S launches, be sure to check out our hands-on impressions of Dirt 5 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon running on Series X, as well as playing some backward compatible Series X games.

An ex-Sega developer has criticized the publisher following the announcement of a repackaged release of a prototype he helped create “under crunch conditions.”

Witch Beam co-founder Tim Dawson took to Twitter to point out that Golden Axed: A Cancelled Prototype – a game launching on Steam as part of  Sega’s 60th-anniversary celebrations – was initially coded by Dawson and a small team in 2012 in an attempt to revive the classic series. Dawson claims that Sega enforced very tough working conditions for the team.

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Dawson and his team were asked to make “a polished gameplay prototype for an internal Golden Axe pitch in about two weeks.”

“This project was my personal nexus of nightmare hours, inept management, industry realisations and heroics achieved with a small team under unreasonable conditions, so it’s an odd feeling to see it surface eight years later without context, credits and with a joke title sequence,” Dawson explained.

The prototype’s development was apparently mired by problems and criticism from upper management.

woke up to the surprising news that Sega is releasing the Golden Axe prototype I coded in 2012 under crunch conditions

At least I’m not alone – this appears to be a surprise to everyone I know who actually worked on it https://t.co/MRmuSFgMlA

— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020

The launch of Golden Axed has surprised some of the prototype’s original developers, who worked on the project almost a decade ago and were not informed by Sega that it would be making a return.

Dawson mentioned that he was working on the game for “14-hour days” amid “7 day work weeks.” and called Sega “parasites” for the tongue-in-cheek description of the game originally featured on its Steam store page, which read as follows: “Golden Axed may be janky, may be buggy, may be an artifact of its time, but it offers a unique glimpse into the prospect of a project that could have been.”

Later, Dawson added to his comments, saying “If you’re excited to play an old prototype, that’s fine! Bunch of people including me worked hard on it. And obviously Sega owns it and any work I did, it’s just a bit weird they’re saying they reached out to the original team.”

IGN reached out to Sega for comment on this story, who provided the following response:

“SEGA Europe reached out to former members of the Golden Axe: Reborn dev team to produce this prototype of the game for Steam as part of our 60th Anniversary celebrations. We wanted to bring the work of the developers at the time to light and celebrate it as a part of our history. Something we didn’t get the chance to do first time around. We certainly didn’t mean to dredge up painful memories for Mr. Dawson and his former colleagues or appear disrespectful. We’ve removed the line from the Steam copy that could have been taken as a slur on the development and would like to reassure everyone that it was intended as a comment on the build we had ported to PC, not the quality of the original work. We’re hoping lots of fans play the prototype and can appreciate the work he and his colleagues put into this developing this prototype.”

Golden Axed is part of Sega’s 60th Anniversary Steam Celebration, which also includes a Streets of Rage/Yakuza mash-up game and a retro battle tank game based on Company of Heroes.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Full spoilers follow for this episode.

As Star Trek: Discovery begins its third season, there are several things at stake for the flagship CBS All Access series, both onscreen and behind the camera. For Commander Michael Burnham and the crew of the Disco, the world has been turned upside-down as they find themselves thrown 930 years into the future in a time where the Federation itself is in tatters. And for the Discovery producers, the show is now firmly entrenched in an era of Star Trek that has been heretofore unexplored. There will be no more banging into canon, no more shoehorning the Disco crew’s adventures into an era well-documented for Trek. No, now it’s time for this show to make its own history and to do so from what is essentially a reboot point. Season 3 of Discovery is, perhaps, where Season 1 of Discovery should’ve began.

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And I say that as a fan of the first two seasons of the show. But there’s no denying that placing Disco in the time period just a few years before Captain Kirk took command of the Enterprise (i.e. the years of the original Gene Roddenberry series) often made things awkward, not just in terms of why we had never heard of the Disco before or how it fit into that world, or why its tech looked so different from the finely attuned world of Trek of that era, but also in the show’s own mission statement. The Original Series was Wagon Train to the Stars, about strange new worlds. The Next Generation represented a new era of new worlds. Deep Space Nine took a long, hard look at one particular part of the galaxy. Voyager was lost in space. And Enterprise was about the birth of Starfleet and the Federation. So what was Discovery, when you boiled it down to its essence? I’m not sure even its creators quite knew the answer.

But now here we are, and Burnham and the Discovery have landed in the 32nd century, far from Klingon wars, Red Angels, Captain Pike, and any other Kirk-era distraction. The show now, finally, is on its own and positioned to expand the Trek world in a totally new way.

After a brief tease involving a lonely Starfleet type “searching for signals,” apparently to no avail, the season premiere kick off essentially where Season 2 ended, with Burnham blasting through the other end of the wormhole she created and landing in the year 3188. It’s almost a thousand years from where she originated, but this time period still has roguish, heart-of-gold space pirates, including new series regular David Ajala as Cleveland “Book” Booker. Burnham, in her Red Angel spacesuit, immediately collides with Book’s ship and the two go plummeting to the planet below in a crackerjack action sequence that requires Burnham to do that most fearsome of things… reboot her computer. Terrifying.

The first two episodes of the season were shot on location in Iceland, and the alien landscapes on display here bring the expected, and expensive, high level of production that Discovery has made a mainstay for modern Star Trek. Also expected is Sonequa Martin-Green’s one-thousand-percent approach to playing Burnham, which reaches one of several peaks in this episode when the character confirms with her suit’s computer that her mission from last season — and the reason she wound up in the future — was successful and that, yes, she and her comrades did save all life in the galaxy. Her screams of joy (and subsequently, grief at what she has lost) effectively sell what is, after all, a plot point from mid-2019.

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Unfortunately, the episode loses steam once Burnham and Ajala’s characters meet one another on the ground of this barren world and are forced to go to a nearby alien city-bazaar of sorts that feels better suited to a Syfy Channel also-ran than it does the rest of this hour.

The episode drags during these scenes. For one thing, the setting doesn’t feel particularly revelatory despite this being our introduction to life in the 32nd century. In fact, with its floating holograms and neon-signs, the place could just as easily have been one of the worlds visited in Star Trek: Picard earlier this year. And the tech doesn’t seem all that advanced, like the big guns that form around the bad guys’ hands like glowing vacuum cleaners. Give me a phaser any day of the week. Still, we do get a fun bit with Burnham during this stretch where she’s been drugged and acting very un-Burnham-like (and yet also somehow very Burnham-like).

Martin-Green and Ajala have good chemistry, but amid all their running around what’s really at stake for Burnham, and the season’s arc, emerges. The Federation and Starfleet are essentially kaput.

“You believe in ghosts,” Book tells Burnham. “That badge on your shirt. Sometimes you see a guy with one of those badges getting himself all worked up about the Federation, the old days. The true believers. They can’t handle that it’s gone.”

You see, a catastrophic event took place about a century earlier — no one seems to really know the specifics — called The Burn, in which a huge swath of Starfleet was wiped out in an instant when the chief fuel source used in starships, dilithium, exploded simultaneously, apparently everywhere. Starfleet and the Federation were crippled by the mysterious event and eventually fell apart.

And so Burnham, and the missing in action (for now) Discovery crew, have a new mission: Restore and rebuild the Federation — or at least maintain through their actions the ideals of the organization that they devoted their lives to.

That Book turns out to secretly be rescuing endangered alien species (see, heart of gold) only serves to make Burnham’s collision with him more fateful. With the Federation essentially wiped out by what could perhaps have been an over-reliance on a fuel source (we of course don’t yet know the full story here), and with Burnham’s new partner turning out to in fact be a conservationist, this season seems to be squarely aimed at the here and now of 2020, where our very own planet is burning and where, for many, the bright shiny future that many have hoped for seems further away than it has been in a long, long time. Star Trek: Discovery has positioned itself in Season 3 as a thinly veiled analogue for our own state of being, with Burnham and her crew now charged with not just saving the day, but also saving the very idea of Star Trek itself. Disco has finally found its calling.

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Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:

• The new tech seen in the marketplace on the planet wasn’t too impressive, but Book’s ship is pretty cool with its every-morphing control panels. Ditto the forever-waiting Starfleet figure, who even brushes his teeth with a laser or something!
• Book’s cat Grudge has a thyroid condition, but she’s a queen. (Is she an endangered species too?)
• “I have a friend with red hair-you-cannot-give-her-any!”
• The Gorn destroyed two light years of subspace?! What’s up with that?
• All time travel tech was destroyed after… the Temporal Wars? Quick, cue up Star Trek: Enterprise!
• And hey, where the heck is the Discovery anyway? And how long will Burnham have to wait for them to emerge from the wormhole…?

Ghost of Tsushima‘s huge free Legends update is right around the corner, and it’ll add four-player co-op to the game. Update 1.1 hits October 16, and now developer Sucker Punch has revealed exactly when you can try it out, and how to access it in-game.

According to Sucker Punch, the update will start rolling out at 8 AM PT, October 16. They expect the game to be available in all regions, worldwide, within an hour of this time. For some regions, this will be quite late: if you’re in the AEST timezone, for instance, it’ll arrive at 1 AM on October 17.

Once Update 1.1 has been downloaded, there are two ways to access the Legends co-op mode. You can either talk to a new in-game character, Gyozen, who will be marked on your map, or simply select “Legends” from the main menu.

Taking either of these actions will load up the PlayStation Store, where you can download a free piece of DLC to enable this mode.

From there, you can team up with friends and choose from the four available classes, so make sure you coordinate with some friends beforehand.

The update will also add a New Game+ option to Ghost of Tsushima, which will add some new gear–including a Charm that lets you befriend dogs.

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Included in the cross-play beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War this coming weekend is a brand-new mode called Fireteam, and Activision has now provided some details about it.

A large-scale mode, Fireteam puts 10 teams of four squads onto the largest maps that Cold War has to offer. In the Dirty Bomb variant that will be featured in the beta, teams must collect and detonate bombs that destroy parts of the map to get the drop on the other teams.

When bombs are detonated, it causes radiation to emerge on the map that makes it dangerous for everyone. “The longer a player hangs onto uranium, the longer radiation sickness sets in. This affects Perk benefits, movement, health regeneration, and ultimately, your Operator’s life,” Activision says of the mode.

“Earn score by eliminating enemies, depositing uranium, and detonating bombs. The Fireteam that can reach the score limit first will achieve victory,” the description goes on.

If you’re killed, you can respawn on a teammate, parachute into the map, or spawn into the seat of a teammate’s car.

“Across every Fireteam mission and mode, you’ll discover some of the most imaginative game loops we’ve ever designed. The Fireteam format allows us to emphasize teamwork and reward creativity, and it allows you to do things you’ve never done in Black Ops multiplayer before,” studio design director David Vonderhaar said.

The Black Ops Cold War beta begins on October 15 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and it runs all weekend. For lots more, check out GameSpot’s rundown of all the key details.