It’s 4th of July weekend, and that means fireworks, cookouts, and sales at participating retailers. One retailer that is very much participating is Best Buy. You can find discounts on Nintendo Switch games, computers, and more during Best Buy’s 4th of July sale. The deals end Monday, so grab what you want before then.
You can find the full sale here, or you can keep on scrolling. Below, we’ve pulled out some of the highlights you may want to pick up this holiday weekend.
Gears of War studio The Coalition will be showcasing a new Unreal Engine 5 technical demo at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this month.
VGC spotted the scheduling of the hour-long presentation in the GDC session viewer, which shares details of the events, shows, lectures, and roundtables lined up for the event. The talk – dubbed the “Alpha Point” demo on Xbox Series X – will be hosted by the studio’s technical director Kate Rayner and technical art director Colin Penty on July 20 at 1.20 pm (PT).
“The talk will cover the learnings the team had while creating Nanite-resolution assets and incorporating them into a fully real-time lighting scenario with Lumen and Virtual Shadow Maps,” according to the description for the session, which is intended for anyone who is interested in getting a sneak peek at next-gen game workflows and visuals.
“Performance and memory observations will be covered for Xbox Series X and S, as well as VFX, Blueprint, material setup, Temporal Super Resolution, and Virtual Texture findings. The Coalition will also cover some preliminary findings on next-gen character creation and MetaHumans integration, demoing a next-generation character test running on Xbox Series X.”
The Game Developers Conference will be fully digital for the second year in a row, and the “Alpha Point” UE5 demo will be available to holders of the All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, and Independent Games Summit Pass, with attendees invited to “learn more about the inner workings of UE5’s new visual systems.”
The Coalition announced in May that it had started to shift its “resources to next-gen development using Unreal Engine 5.” The studio also confirmed that this move wasn’t just for Gears 6, saying it will be “developing on UE5 for multiple new projects in the coming years,” though they would “not be announcing any new projects or titles for some time.”
Later in the same month, Epic Games made Unreal Engine 5 freely available in Early Access, giving game developers a chance to test out and explore some of Epic’s robust game development tools and features for its next-gen engine. The company specifically showcased some of the new advancements in a tech demo called Valley of the Ancient (above).
That tech demo offered devs a chance to start “digging into” the new technology and finding out how to leverage them for future games, with Unreal Engine 5 expected to be released in full at some point in early 2022. There will likely be more updates from the engineers leading up to the launch, so stay tuned to IGN for all of the latest details.
Welcome to another Friday – please allow Joe, Matt, and Jesse to steer you down a relaxing, lazy river of cool games they’ve been playing recently, from Sea of Thieves to Wildermyth (which sounds so good that two of us bought it during the show). If you’re up to date on Loki, we’ve also got a big spoiler-y chat right at the end.
In the Endless Search this week we return to Jesse’s unexpected area of genius – really bad things – then hear from a listener who had a horrible time in an onsen.
Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].
In a statement shared on the official id Software Twitter account, executive producer Mary Stratton cited several contributing factors for the team canceling Invasion mode, including how development on the mode was slowed down due to the team working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stratton also notes that additional factors included how previously released updates for Doom Eternal had been met with positive reception from players.
An important update on the development of DOOM Eternal from id Software Executive Producer Marty Stratton. pic.twitter.com/RPfhek2crI
Doom Eternal’s Invasion mode was originally announced at QuakeCon 2018, with the mode slated to launch as a post-launch free update. The mode would have allowed players to play as demons and invade other player’s campaigns, similar to how Soulsborne titles like the 2020 remake of Demon’s Souls, which allow you the opportunity to invade another player’s world.
Alongside the cancellation of Invasion mode and a new single-player Horde mode, Stratton also confirmed in the post that Doom Eternal would also receive a “refresh” of the multiplayer Battlemode that will include a more “competitive, rank-based structure” alongside a new map and various tweaks to gameplay and balance. id Software is expected to share more details on the new Horde Mode, and Battlemode refreshes at this year’s QuakeCon.
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Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
Few games hold up as well as Dead Space. Despite releasing 13 years ago, Visceral Games’ space horror shooter is still as intense and scary today as it was then. In fact, it’s shockingly good–you can get it on PC right now, and it still controls exceedingly well, features some great shooting mechanics, and looks pretty great.
But most importantly, Dead Space can still scare the hell out of you, with a combination of great sound design, excellent jump scares, ridiculously gross monsters, and awesome set piece moments.
So that’s what makes the rumors of a Dead Space remake coming from EA Motive so…weird. Supposedly, Electronic Arts looked at the massive success of Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 remake and thought that Dead Space was ripe for a similar treatment. But Resident Evil 2 on the original PlayStation is today, realistically, kind of ugly and clunky. It’s a tough game to go back to in its original form despite being full of great ideas and frightening moments. It’s the kind of game where a visual and mechanical overhaul helps bring its best ideas forward into a modern setting.
Meanwhile, Dead Space might be getting on in years, but the technical leaps from the seventh generation of consoles to now aren’t nearly as drastic as those from the PlayStation 1 era. Games from 12 years ago play pretty much the same way as they did then, and they still look pretty damn good. As a massive Dead Space fan, I’ve been itching for that franchise to be reinvigorated in some way (although without Visceral behind it [RIP], will it even be the same?), but a remake seems like an unnecessary expenditure of resources for an already great game.
The more I think about it, though, the more I think it’s possible for a remake of Dead Space to do wonders for the phenomenal and distinct franchise. There are a ton of great ideas that don’t need changing in Dead Space, and while a graphical overhaul would be nice, it’s definitely not essential. But there’s a whole lot of room for a remade Dead Space to expand itself and revive the whole franchise like yet another unkillable necromorph: through story.
When it was released, Dead Space came at a time when games were starting to really lean into doing some smart things with narrative but didn’t quite have the resources or graphical power to put that narrative on screen. The result was (and is) a heavy reliance on audio logs. Dead Space has characters who show up in certain places to talk with the player character, Isaac Clark, and they’ll call out on the radio to discuss objectives or pressing situations. But really, like BioShock and countless others from the era, Dead Space is a game when you arrive after the disaster–and the only way to learn about it is by finding tidbits left behind by the people who are already dead.
That setup is kind of fundamental to Dead Space, and I’m not advocating for a change to it (although, as Dead Space 2 showed, being caught in the middle of a disastrous outbreak of undead monsters is just as frightening as arriving in its aftermath). But there’s a lot that could be done to tweak Dead Space’s story and worldbuilding to make them more clear and immediate, to pull players in deeper, and ultimately make future Dead Space titles more viable.
The story of the USG Ishimura, where Dead Space takes place, is one tied to the planet Aegis VII. A mining colony, the people on the planet discovered an alien artifact called a Marker, which first started working on the colonists’ minds to make them hallucinate and go mad, eventually turning them into a bunch of mutated undead necromorph monsters.
You learn tidbits of this story from audio logs all over the Ishimura–how it arrived at Aegis VII just before the disaster, how it brought the Marker on board, and how it ultimately succumbed to madness and monsters of its own. But most of that story has to be imagined and parsed by the player, and we never see it play out during the game.
But Dead Space has a bunch of additional materials that fill in the gaps in what happened during that first game and could absolutely expand on what’s in a Dead Space remake. There’s a motion comic that was released beside the game that tells the tale of the outbreak on Aegis VII, and an animated movie, Dead Space: Downfall, that shows what happened aboard the Ishimura before your arrival. If you were a Dead Space player but not a die-hard fan, you’ve probably never seen all this extra material–to say nothing of the other comics and novels that tie into the universe.
So with advances in gaming tech over the last decade, plus a whole lot of ancillary story material that already exists, there’s no reason Dead Space has to relegate itself to being a story mostly told in audio logs and text messages. In fact, there’s no reason Dead Space has to stick with only the story of what happens in the existing game at all. Dead Space is actually a huge, interesting world, with a lot of moving political parts as relates to corporations, governments, militaries, and religions. They’re all essential to the story Visceral tells in this first game and in the subsequent games. Dead Space is already a really rich world with a lot of extra story material. And this is a perfect opportunity to get that stuff shown on screen rather than just piped through speakers or headphones.
I still love Dead Space as it was released in 2008, but if Electronic Arts wants a horror remake on par with Resident Evil 2, it has to take some serious notes from that game as well. RE2 isn’t just a spiffed-up version of an old game–it’s a reimagined version, with changes both subtle and expansive, to make it a better game in many respects. A lot less work needs to be done on Dead Space’s mechanics and visuals than was necessary for RE2. But when it comes to story, there’s a vast amount of interesting, disgusting, frightening stuff into which a new Dead Space could tap. EA can learn something from the haunting demands of the Marker: unify the story, expand the world, and make Dead Space whole.
The long weekend is upon us, and to kick things off, we’re highlighting some of the best tech deals that Friday had on offer. Mac products are once again discounted at Amazon, so if you held off last time, it might be worth checking out the MacBook Pro or Air this time around. The Apple Watch Series 6 (the newest one) is also discounted, as are an array of other handy tech and household items.
Night of the Animated Dead will feature characters from Romero’s original film. The voice cast includes Josh Duhamel as Harry Cooper, Dulé Hill as Ben, Katharine Isabelle as Barbara, James Roday Rodriguez as Tom, Katee Sackhoff as Judy, Will Sasso as Sheriff McClelland, Jimmi Simpson as Johnny, and Nancy Travis as Helen Cooper.
The new adaptation is being helmed by Jason Axinn, who last directed 2019’s animated horror film To Your Last Death. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment plans to release Night of the Animated Dead sometime this fall on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital.
Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead follows a group of strangers who take shelter in a farmhouse as the dead begin to rise and attack the living. Tensions come to a head when the survivors bunker down after night falls.
While the word “zombie” is never uttered in Night of the Living Dead, Romero’s film is largely seen as a horror touchstone that pioneered how the undead are portrayed within the genre. Romero directed five more sequels, including Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead.
Though George A. Romero died of lung cancer in 2017, his widow Suzanne Romero is developing Twilight of the Dead, a new movie based on a project that the late director was working on before his passing. After working with a team of three screenwriters, Suzanne Romero is preparing to meet with directors for the project.
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J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.
The story goes that Pokemon was inspired by kids collecting bugs in Japan, and as such the association with nature has always been a pillar of the franchise. The Pokemon Company is applying this philosophy to a brand new theme park in Japan.
As reported by Kotaku, The Pokemon Company has officially announced Pokemon Wonder, a 48,000-square foot forest theme park where its main attraction is experiencing nature and Pokemon together.
Rather than a traditional amusement park with rides and mascots, Pokemon Wonder is situated in a vast forest that remained untouched for 20 years. There, attendees can explore the forest and look for handcrafted Pokemon made from items like leaves and acorns.
According to Kotaku, the park is located behind Yomiuriland, Tokyo’s largest amusement park. The Pokemon Company bills the park as a “nature adventure” and it will operate for a limited time in Japan from July 17 to April 3, 2022.
The upcoming Pokemon Legends Arceus is also taking the outdoor concept to the next level with what looks like one of the biggest open-worlds in a Pokemon game yet.
Terminator 2 celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and to mark the occasion, The Ringer has published a large oral history featuring James Cameron and other major creators associated with the film.
There are a number of interesting new tidbits scattered throughout the expansive piece, but there’s one in particular that talks about the origins of John Connor — the last hope of the human resistance and persistent target of Cameron’s killer robots from the future. It’s well-known that the idea of The Terminator came to Cameron in a dream, but he’s never really talked about the origins of John Connor himself, at least, until now.
As Cameron tells it, he was quite high when he conceived of John Connor, who is an unborn child in the original film and a snarky 90s kid in the sequel. Cameron remembers, “I remember sitting there once, high on [ecstasy], writing notes for Terminator, and I was struck by Sting’s song, that, ‘I hope the Russians love their children too.’ And I thought, ‘You know what? The idea of a nuclear war is just so antithetical to life itself.’ That’s where the kid came from.”
The song Cameron is referring to is titled, aptly enough, “Russians.” The song goes, “There is no monopoly on common sense / On either side of the political fence / We share the same biology, regardless of ideology / Believe me when I say to you / I hope the Russians love their children too.”
John Connor, of course, would go on to be a key part of the Terminator mythos. He is most famously played by Edward Furlong, who according to the oral history was cast off the street with no acting experience. Furlong purportedly nailed the audition on the first try, and Cameron had his John Connor.
