Author: Trafficblast

Marvel president Kevin Feige has addressed a number of concerns that have been voiced by Chinese audiences ahead of the release of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

As reported by Variety, Feige participated in an interview with Chinese film critic Raymond Zhou during the U.S. Shang-Chi premiere this week, in which he responded to some of China’s biggest gripes surrounding the MCU feature and assured fans that careful consideration had been given on the road to taking the comics to the big screen.

In particular, Feige stressed that the upcoming Phase 4 movie doesn’t feature Fu Manchu, a character who serves as Shang-Chi’s father and primary nemesis in the comics who has been on the receiving end of backlash for years, with many seeing the character as a racially insensitive caricature. Feige confirmed he doesn’t appear “in any way, shape or form.”

“[Fu Manchu] is not a character we own or would ever want to own. It was changed in the comics many, many, many years ago. We never had any intention of [having him] in this movie,” Feige emphasized, adding: “Definitively, Fu Manchu is not in this movie, is not Shang-Chi’s father, and again, is not even a Marvel character, and hasn’t been for decades.”

Instead of Fu Manchu, Shang-Chi’s father in the movie is Wenwu, portrayed by Tony Leung. As explained in a recent featurette, our titular hero will find himself returning to his father’s world after running away in his youth, which is quite a different story to the one sometimes told in the comics that sees the character abandon his Chinese roots to embrace the West.

“That’s certainly one of the elements we’ve changed,” Feige stated, reassuring potential moviegoers. “All of our comics go back 60, 70, 80 years. Almost everything has happened in almost every comic, and we chose the elements that we like to turn into an MCU feature. So that story is not what this is about.

“That sense of running away… is presented as one of his flaws,” he added, noting the narrative change. “It is a flaw to run away to the West and to hide from his legacy and his family — that’s how the movie is presented. And how he will face that and overcome that is part of what the story’s about.”

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is set for a wide theatrical release on September 3. The movie doesn’t yet have a release date in China despite it being an important market for movies, with its box office previously taking $629 million for Avengers: Endgame, making it the country’s highest-grossing foreign film ever, plus the sixth-largest earner overall.

For more on the MCU film, get a glimpse of the movie’s dragon character in the latest poster, check out our explainer on Shang-Chi himself, and if the Ten Rings are actually magical.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Splitgate, the portal-based shooter from 1047 Games, will remain in its open beta period for the ‘foreseeable future’ after its recent unexpected popularity has seen more than 10 million users download the game in under 30 days.

In a press release, 1047 Games announced that Splitgate will remain in open beta as the studio continues to work on scaling the game. The game’s surge in popularity has caused a string of server queues and wait times for players hoping to access the Halo-like shooter.

1047 Games has been active in addressing the strain on its servers through social media and the game’s official Discord channel, whilst at the same time working to increase player capacity on the game. In just the past four weeks the studio’s team of just 30 people has increased its server capacity to now support up to 175,000 concurrent players, and significantly reduced player wait times.

It took a few weeks, but our server situation is better than ever! We can now support 175k concurrent players! And the server improvements are only going to continue. https://t.co/E2sWrxQevx

— Splitgate (@Splitgate) August 15, 2021

CEO and co-founder of 1047 Games, Ian Proulx, shared in the press release his thoughts on the game’s overwhelming popularity and what it has meant for scalability. “This has been the most surreal time of my life,” said Proulx. “The fan support has been incredible as we work to improve the player experience. We never dreamed of having to scale this big this quickly, and as a result we have had to overcome challenges to keep up with player demand. We met several major milestones in a short time, creating a stable platform where fans can expect to find a server to play on relatively quickly, and I’m proud of what our team has accomplished – but there’s a lot more to come!”

Proulx continued, “In looking at the issues facing the scalability of the game’s backend, the process includes far more than simply dealing with server capacity. We are focused on keeping the game stable for fans, and iterating on the game’s concurrent capacity in order to minimize player wait times. We want to do this the right way, and we want to be prepared for massive scale when we officially launch, all the while continuing to improve the beta with frequent updates, additional features, and improvements to server capacity.”

1047 Games says that it has several content updates planned for fans across the rest of the year whilst further changes to the game’s backend framework continue to be rolled out. Splitgate’s first content update will feature on the game later today (August 19) and will bring with it a Ranked Duos mode as well as increased server capacity. 1047 Games will be announcing further updates in weeks to come including what the company describes as a ‘significant announcement’ at Gamescom 2021.

The development team at 1047 Games are certainly striving high with the FPS title. In a recent Q&A, the team discussed its hopes to bring the title to other platforms including a possible port to mobile and Nintendo Switch. For more on Splitgate, make sure to check out our review-in-progress for the game where we have so far awarded it a 7/10.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN who spends a lot of his time in Splitgate tentatively shooting through blank enemy portals. You can follow him on Twitter.

Skyblivion is a mod that’s very easy to explain: it’s aiming to bring the entirety of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion into the engine used by The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. But the reality isn’t that the team of volunteers making it simply wants to upscale the 2006 game we already know – they want to make the dream version of the game that Bethesda’s developers had in their heads back when they came up with Oblivion.

In a way, the Skyblivion team is treating Oblivion like a sketch, and painting in new details drawn from a number of sources. Seen in a recent dev diary, areas like the city of Leyawiin have been fully redesigned based on unused Oblivion concept art, bringing to life ideas that could never be realised in the original game. Others, like the Fall Forest, have been expanded and enriched with more foliage and areas of interest, with the Skyblivion team guessing at what the original designers might have aimed for with more technological grunt at their disposal.

This mixture of realising unused ideas and adding modern sheen to areas left fairly basic is part of the Skyblivion team’s philosophy. “We are definitely taking some creative freedom here and there,” project lead K Rebel tells me over email. “If we didn’t, you might as well replay the original Oblivion. Rest assured, though, that we are approaching this as fans of Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls games.”

You can see a Skyblivion quest in action below:

“Our cities, interiors, dungeons and environments are larger and filled with a lot more detail than anything in Oblivion, and in many cases Skyrim too,” K Rebel continues. “This already feels like we added some ‘cut content’, as I’m sure the original developers would have loved to create a bigger and more detailed world, but in the end were held back by the technology of the time. For example, a lot of the fortresses from the original Oblivion were singular towers, which in a lot of cases we have rebuilt into actual fortresses that are inspired by the stories you can find about them.”

It’s not just the world that will see those improvements, but the game’s mechanics, too. “Our approach to this project is similar in a lot of ways to any other AAA game’s development cycle. We focus our efforts redesigning areas of the game that need it the most, such as environments and unique weapons. Nobody likes finishing a long questline only to receive a generic sword, or exploring through empty forests.”

For the initial release, at least, there is a line being drawn on what can be added, though. The first goal – and one the team’s been working on for many years already – is to bring to life a new version of the original Oblivion, while keeping its basic make-up intact. “Anything else that wasn’t part of the original game won’t be touched until after our first public release,” K Rebel explains. “We have recovered a big list of [cut] quests, for instance, but unless our questing department has time to spare before the release these won’t be added until later.”

That goes for the original game’s DLC, too – the 1.0 version of Skyblivion will include the team’s take on the base version of Oblivion, so don’t expect to be able to use the infamous horse armour right away.

Even while still in development, Skyblivion feels like a fascinating mixture of homage and fan fiction, resulting in something that doesn’t sit totally comfortably in either camp. I ask whether K Rebel sees this game as designed for those who already love Oblivion, or those who never played it: “It depends. I think that people who have recently played through Oblivion will be able to really appreciate Skyblivion on a new level, as they can clearly see how much work has been put into remaking this game. On the other hand, I think a lot of people, including myself, would kill to be able to re-experience Oblivion for the first time again – and on top of that a version of Oblivion which has much improved environments, better unique weapons and is overall a less janky and buggy experience (although a lot of this jank is what gave Oblivion its goofy charm).”

Of course, the worry that hangs over any project like this is that, no matter the good intention, a developer or publisher might see it as theft rather than tribute. Thankfully, the Skyblivion team doesn’t see trouble on its horizon. “There has been some contact with Bethesda, but projects like these are in a bit of a legal grey area,” K Rebel admits. “Bethesda allows us to do what we do but won’t openly support it. Having that said, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to a number of Bethesda employees, some of which even worked on Oblivion, and they had nothing but kind things to say about our project, which has been very humbling to say the least. A takedown is something I can safely say I never see happening.”

The last major question is when we might be able to try Skyblivion for the first time – and it’s really the only question K Rebel can’t give me an answer for. The project lead explains that the team has an unwritten rule not to promise a date, but that they are working on a public road map to make the road to the finish line a little clearer.

It’s a fair answer (if a slightly unsatisfying one for those excited by the prospect of the mod) – this is a team made up purely of volunteers, working on the game in their spare time. It’s a mammoth project, and one that K Rebel says takes up practically all of their spare time. So why take it on? In a way, it seems to be that making the dream version of Oblivion is, in itself, the dream:

“I think once you get to a certain age, everyone is going to try and chase their childhood. When I read comments on our updates I think that’s something that our ‘fans’ are the most excited for – reliving a memory from the past. For me personally though, the project started out as a dream to work on my own game and make it what I wanted it to be. This soon grew into a massive project that we want to work on together and are able to make it everything we want it to be in an Elder Scrolls game. We may not get paid for our work but it’s a really unique experience to be able to work with like-minded individuals and work purely on something out of love and passion.”

Skyblivion is looking for volunteers to join its development team – you can sign up here, or follow the team on Twitter.

Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

It seems unfathomable that ten years after the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim launched, the game could still have any secrets yet to be uncovered. But following on from yesterdays developer revelations about a bee derailing one of the most well-known (and memed) openings in video games, another development secret has been revealed, this time regarding the game’s treasure hunting foxes.

The story comes by the way of Joel Burgess, who was a developer at Bethesda during the creation of Skyrim. In a series of tweets, he outlined one of the games biggest post-launch rumours about mysterious foxes that would appear and lead players to treasure chests and other goodies.

Alright, so inspired by @NPurkeypile‘s bee post yesterday, here is one of my favorite bits of Skyrim oral history – the myth of the treasure fox.

I’ve told this story before in talks/etc, but I don’t think I’ve shared it with twitter. Here goes. pic.twitter.com/7uaUlbpmQ8

— Joel Burgess (@JoelBurgess) August 18, 2021

Burgess outlined that after the game released, a number of players would tip each other off that if you followed the game’s many foxes, they would lead you to areas of the map filled with treasure. Since this had never been a deliberate feature that had been added into the game, Burgess was naturally confused, and quickly sought to uncover how and why this was happening.

From consulting with other members of the development team, Jean Simonet, Jonah Lobe, and Mark Teare, it quickly became apparent that the culprit was not part of the game’s script at all, but part of the navmesh system, “an invisible 3D sheet of polygons that is laid over the world, telling AI where it can and cannot go”. Once spooked, the foxes were supposed to flee along a generated path, using the navmesh for guidance. But for some reason, the fox would automatically flee towards the area with the largest number of triangles on the navmesh.

Skyrim uses something called ‘navmesh’ for AI navigation.

For non-dev folks, this is an invisible 3D sheet of polygons that is laid over the world, telling AI where it can and cannot go.

This red stuff is navmesh. You can read about it here: https://t.co/3vutoKhEHk pic.twitter.com/W37PHbxeDi

— Joel Burgess (@JoelBurgess) August 18, 2021

The answer to this strange behaviour was eventually discovered: it was happening because the fox fleeing would travel 100 triangles away, as opposed to using real-world measurements, such as 100 metres away.

“You know where it’s easy to find 100 triangles? The camps/ruins/etc that we littered the world with, and filled with treasure to reward your exploration,” said Burgess.

Areas of interest like camps and treasure caches contained large numbers of triangles due to the increase in detail, and so in its hunt for a lot of triangles to travel over in order to flee, the foxs’ AI routine pretty much always took them to a camp or something similar. In Burgess’s words: “foxes aren’t leading you to treasure – but the way they behave is leading them to areas that tend to HAVE treasure, because POIs w/loot have other attributes (lots of small navmesh triangles) that the foxes ARE pursuing”.

So there you have it: another story of how tricky and unpredictable game development can be. And another example of how, ten years after launch, games can still throw up surprises, quirks, and interesting tales here and there.

For more from Skyrim, check out the news of it receiving an FPS boost on Xbox Series X, our favourite console-friendly Skyrim mods, and the copy of Skyrim that sold for $600.

Liam Wiseman is a Freelance News writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @liamthewiseman.

DC and Warner Bros Home Entertainment have unveiled the main cast for Catwoman: Hunted, an new anime-style film that premieres next year.

The line up for DC’s latest animated feature, as announced by The Hollywood Reporter, will star Elizabeth Gillies (Victorious, Dynasty) as Catwoman. Stephanie Beatriz, best known for her portrayal of Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, will play Batwoman.

The film also features voice work from The Walking Dead’s Lauren Cohan, will take up the role of Alfred Pennyworth’s daughter Julia. Veteran voice actor Steve Blum – best known for his work as the voice of Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bepop and as Wolverine across a number of different X-Men – will play Soloman Grundy.

DC’s nefarious Black Mask will feature in the film, played by Jonathan Banks of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame. Other stars include Keith David as DC kingpin Tobias Whale, Zehra Fazal as Talia al Ghul and Nosferata, Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Barbara Minerva / Cheetah, Jonathan Frakes as Boss Moxie and King Faraday, Kelly Hu as Cheshire, Eric Lopez as Domino 1, Andrew Kishino as Mr. Yakuza and Domino 6, Jaqueline Obrados as La Dama, and Ron Yuan as Doctor Tzin.

According to THR, the film starts with Catwoman stealing a priceless jewel, which for one reason or another puts her on a treacherous path up against the film’s many foes. With a whole host of criminal masterminds up against Catwoman, it will be interesting to see how the film shares the spotlight between its consortium of supervillains.

As for its reported anime style, the film is set to be directed by Shinsuke Terasawa. He is known for his work as a director and animator on projects including Mobile Suit Gundam, Dragon Ball Z, and Gintama. Meanwhile, the script is being written by Greg Weisman, who has worked on a number of animated shows before, including Young Justice and Marvel’s The Spectacular Spider-Man.

Catwoman: Hunted which is expected to premiere in early 2022. For more DC-related news, make sure to check out the news of the DC comic character that seemingly came out as bisexual in a recent issue.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

NHL 22 will be skating on to the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 in October, EA announced today, marking the hockey sim’s debut on the new console generation. In so doing it will transition to the Frostbite Engine, joining Madden and FIFA on EA’s proprietary engine.

The engine update is a long time coming. Where FIFA transitioned to Frostbite in 2016, and Madden made the move the year after, NHL steadfastly stuck with the Ignite Engine introduced at the beginning of the PS4 and Xbox One generation. Doing so allowed it to avoid the myriad tech issues suffered by Madden and FIFA, but also left it looking noticeably dated.

Speaking with IGN, NHL producer Clement Kong says “now is really the time” to move to Frostbite now that the series is headed to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. He says the team is also conscious of avoiding the pitfalls that Madden and FIFA had to overcome.

“[Madden and FIFA] had big challenges going into Frostbite,” Kwong says. “Fortunately for us, even during work from home, Frostbite has been a multi-year project […] we’ve been integrating it very smoothly.”

He continues, “We want to prioritize not losing feature and being able to add features. So we’ve really had an eye on the lessons that we learned from the previous generation transition and falling into that trap.”

In moving to the Frostbite Engine, the NHL team is rebuilding all of the arenas around the new lighting engine, allowing for enhanced particle and visual effects on the ice and elsewhere. The character models are also being redone, which should be a relief to a fans tired of the caveman-like players populating many of the teams.

But while there will be enhancements across the board to the actual visuals, don’t expect big improvements to the animation or player interactions. “One thing that we didn’t show was procedural awareness: so eye tracking, being aware of where the puck is, facial animation… those are all new features specific to the PS5 and Xbox Series X,” Kwong says. “But in terms of overall gameplay animation, that hasn’t really changed yet. I would expect now that we’re on the Frostbite Engine now, we want to really drive that immersion and build on what we have.”

NHL 22 takes a page from Madden

NHL 22’s gameplay changes will mostly be down to X-Factors, which are the other new feature being introduced for this version. Madden fans know X-Factors well, as they’ve been a gameplay staple for a couple years now. They represent special abilities granted to superstars like Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews, who will also grace this year’s cover.

When Matthews meets the prerequisites for activating his “Zone” ability, he will be get access to perks like Shock & Awe, which can give him “exceptional power and accuracy shooting out of a deke.” Superstar players also have access to secondary abilities that impact puck pickups and deflections.

X-Factors were well-received when they were introduced in Madden 20, and EA is hoping some of that shine rubs off on NHL as well. They will go a long way toward differentiating the stars from the scrubs — a recurring problem for NHL over the years. Kwong says that the top 50 NHL players wlil have a Zone ability, including goalies.

Outside of Zone abilities and the move to the Frostbite Engine, NHL 22 will be updating the presentation, introducing AR elements that are intended to be eye-catching while keeping the game flowing. No three stars or players walking down the tunnel, but the NHL development team will consider those improvements as they “continue to expand on [NHL’s] visuals year over year.”

Kwong also revealed that World of Chel — NHL’s casual-focused outdoor mode — is NHL’s most-played feature, and NHL 22 would feature an “always-on dressing room” to make it easier to gather with friends. Not much else was revealed about franchise mode and Be a Pro save that they will include more scenarios and support for the Seattle Kraken, but that more info will shared soon.

However, NHL will not include GM Connected, the online league system that was cut in the move to the PS4 and Xbox One. “We took a really long, hard look at this feature, knowing that we’d have to prioritize the move to Frostbite,” Kwong says, saying that the feature is “on the list of long-term projects” and that “we know the community is asking for it.”

As for the previous generation version, Kwong says that there will be “full feature parity” between the last generation and current generation versions, with the Xbox One and PS4 version also moving to the Frostbite Engine. Similar to FIFA and Madden, NHL 22 will include a Dual Entitlement system, meaning PS4 and Xbox One owners who pre-order the more expensive “X-Factor Edition” will be able to update to the newer consoles for free. However, only Hockey Ultimate Team progress will be transferrable, with the various career modes being locked to whatever console you start them on.

NHL 22 will release October 15 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, and Xbox One.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN. Her only wish is for the Wild to lift the Stanley Cup at some point in her lifetime.

How much do you expect out of a television that costs $680 for 65-inches and $580 for 55-inches? If it supports 4K and comes with important game-mode features like auto low latency (ALLM) and variable refresh rate (in this case AMD Freesync), what else does it need? Those are the questions you’re going to have to answer for yourself when considering the Vizio MQ6 Quantum television.

Even for its extremely competitive pricing, I still have certain expectations when it comes to gaming performance and overall features. I want good color reproduction, HDMI 2.1, and a good range of viewing angles. The MQ6 has those. I also expect support for up to 120Hz, solid HDR performance, and decent black levels. The MQ6 doesn’t deliver those.

It feels like a television that may have made one too many concessions in order to meet a price tier Vizio really wanted to be in.

As a result, the television offers a mixed feature set that will only appeal to a specific subset of customers looking for a gaming television. It’s not a bad overall television, but many gamers – especially those who also expect it to be a great movie-watching television – will be disappointed by its offerings and performance nonetheless.

Vizio MQ6 – Design and Features

Vizio has been absolutely slaying it in recent years when it comes to the look of its displays, and the MQ6 is no exception. For the purposes of this review, we had the 55-inch model. From the front, this is a very pretty television. The top, left, and right bezels are thin and nearly nonexistent while the bottom features a sleek one-inch-tall bump that frames the screen nicely, and is home to the Vizio logo in the lower right hand corner.

The feet are made of plastic, and while they didn’t feel great out of the box, once they’re on the television and the whole setup is on a media console, they look the part.

The backside of the television, which few will often see, is rather thick of a modern 2021 television, but it’s not what I would call “ugly.” It’s fine, and at least it’s not just a large, rounded bulge that seems to be the default for most manufacturers. The power cable is permanently affixed to the back of the TV on the left side (when facing the MQ6) while the three HDMI 2.1 cables (one of which supports eARC) are on the right side.

Overall, the Vizio MQ6 features a very simple design that looks really nice.

Vizio MQ6 – Remote

Voice control finally comes to Vizio, and the wait was worth it. Vizio’s implementation of voice control into a remote that looks very similar to last year’s designs is a welcome addition, and in testing it worked great and very rarely misunderstood me. Voice control makes browsing YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services so much easier than the previous method of manually punching in letters with the navigation buttons. Once you move to voice control, you never want to go back.

The new voice control button slides between the back and closed captioning buttons and above the volume rocker, which makes it easy to find at just below dead center on the remote.

I personally like Vizio’s remote because it doesn’t waste space with unnecessary buttons and functions. While some people like the larger remotes with lots of classic inputs, I find that 99 percent of the time, I just need volume, voice control, and navigation buttons. Everything else is superfluous.

Vizio includes six pre-installed shortcut buttons which may change over time, but IGN’s review unit featured Peacock, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Crackle, and Tubi.

Vizio MQ6 – Software and Interface

Vizio wonderfully overhauled Smartcast last year and the platform is still great. The interface is snappy and there are a ton of streaming apps to choose from. One note for those who have never used Smartcast before: there is no “marketplace” to download apps. Everything the TV can have is pre-installed, so if you don’t see a service listed, it isn’t supported on the platform.

While Smartcast does come loaded with most of the apps customers will be looking for, it still doesn’t have everything. Missing last year and still missing in 2021 are either Cruncyroll or Funimation, the top anime streaming apps. This is not going to be a big deal for many people, but if you are trying to stay caught up on One Piece or rewatch Naruto, you’ll have to find another way to get it on screen. Luckily, the MQ6 does support Airplay and Google Cast.

Vizio MQ6 – Picture Quality

While the MQ6 looks nice and has great features, the picture quality is where that $680 price for 65 inches starts to show itself. You can only get so much for that low of a price.

The color is pretty good (Vizio promises 75% of P3 color gamut which is great for a TV of this price) and that is likely due to the use of Quantum dots on this panel, which is what the “Q” stands for in the television’s name. Color tonality also seems improved, as there was not any issue with the lean towards magenta that the P-Series Quantum from last year had. The color isn’t going to win any awards, but most customers looking for a TV in this tier will be overjoyed with the quality.

But as solid as the color reproduction is, there are other issues.

First, Vizio doesn’t publish how many local dimming zones the MQ6 has, instead just referring to it as a “full array” backlight. In practice, there do not appear to be very many of them and they also appear rather large, as the television has some serious halo issues. You won’t notice it too much when playing video games, but if you are ever watching anything in ultra wide format with captions, you’re going to see a halo of light around those bright white letters. To illustrate, just looking at the “no input detected” screen should give you an idea of how bad the situation is on the MQ6.

Second, it does have some light stuttering that is usually easy to ignore, but it can be seen in slow-panning shots in low frame rate footage (like the 24 frames per second that is common in Hollywood films). I didn’t notice it much at all in gaming, gratefully. The panel does have a hard time with moire, though. Moire is a “wavy” visual phenomenon that occurs when there are closely-packed vertical lines in an image, the MQ6 will show them to some degree in any setting I tried. The television’s default picture mode will make them unbearable, but once you turn down the artificial sharpening and move from Standard to Calibrated modes, the moire is a lot less obtrusive. Still, it’s there.

Third, the black levels aren’t great which means overall contrast is what I would call “middling.” It’s not by any means bad, but you will notice that scenes that should be deep black will shade more towards very dark grey or even have a bit of a blue hue to them, which can lead to a bit of a washed out look. That said, this is actually ok for competitive games where you don’t want shadows to be completely lost and I found games like Apex Legends to actually benefit from this. Coming from a monitor that I specifically tune to have weaker contrast so that I get a more even look at a scene, the MQ6 looks a bit better actually. For movies though, especially those in Dolby Vision or other HDR modes, it’s not the best.

That brings up the fourth issue: dynamic range. Especially in gaming on the PlayStation 5, the MQ6 absolutely struggled to properly display a range of lighting conditions in a single scene. Specifically in The Last of Us Part II, which I tested in the new 4K at 60 frames per second mode on the PlayStation 5, the strong mix of bright sunlight shining down through a dark forest or the shadows of a destroyed building looked akin to trying to immediately adjust your eyes in bright sunlight after sitting in a dark closet for half an hour. This issue was present both with HDR on and off.

The MQ6 struggled to display highlight detail at the same time as shadow detail, which meant that either the highlights were totally blown out and devoid of detail, or the shadows became very dark as the television attempted to bring that detail back. While both occur, it’s more highlights that are a problem than shadows.

I think what’s worse than the loss of detail, though, is having to endure watching the MQ6 attempt to adjust its backlight in real time during a game. Whenever a mixed lighting scene appeared, the television would take a few seconds to adjust brightness in a scene – which involves over-brightening shadows and then toning them back right after as it tries to darken highlights and then bring them back to a correct exposure – which is immersion breaking and visually annoying as exposure levels would jump around as I tried to navigate an area.

I will say this issue was not present in every game I played and was most dominantly an issue in The Last of Us Part II. I tested this on other displays to make sure it wasn’t an issue with the game itself, but no other television or monitor exhibited this phenomenon.

Finally, the screen itself is very, very reflective which means it is a glare magnet. It’s also not particularly bright, so you’ll get the most mileage out of the MQ6 in a dark room.

It’s not all bad though, as the panel uniformity issues as well as poor viewing angles that I noted in last year’s P-Series Quantum model appears to at least be improved. The MQ6 panel has some minor uniformity issues (our unit had a darker lower left hand corner for example) and I found that while sitting dead-on straight to the television was always best, slightly angled viewing situations were not nearly as bad as they have been on past televisions. Extreme angles are still a no-no, but slight angles are tolerable.

Vizio MQ6 – Gaming Performance

While the MQ6 has three HDMI ports and all of them are HDMI 2.1, the panel’s limitation to 60 hertz means that the only benefits gamers will see involve ALLM and Freesync, though the benefits of variable refresh rate are curtailed by that frame rate cap.

As far as 60 frames per second gaming goes though, the MQ6 handles them like a champ. I tested Apex Legends, The Last of Us Part II, and Destiny II on the television and all of them felt snappy and responsive. Other than the HDR issues I note above, the MQ6 is great for those who don’t see the benefit of exceeding 60 frames per second gaming. Those folks are the ones who predominantly play single player games, and for them the MQ6 will work well.

Vizio MQ6 – Sound Quality

Most sound out of modern televisions is bad, but the MQ6 takes the cake here: sound quality is awful on this television. I always recommend getting some kind of external sound system and in this case it’s a must: this might be the worst sounding television I’ve reviewed in some time. Not only is audio totally bereft of any low-end, the overall EQ seems to be off. I don’t have much else to say: get a sound bar.