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What happens when you take Mortal Kombat 11’s beautiful graphics and mess them up? Well they become surprisingly delicious as it turns out. That’s what we find out in this week’s episode of Potato Mode.

Potato Mode is a series where we take your favorite games and turn their graphics into mush. We start by showing how good the game can look, and then we turn down the settings as low as we can, and then we go even lower using tools and programs outside of the game. The results are both fascinating and hilarious.

Make sure to come back for part 2 where we check out Mortal Kombat 11’s Aftermath expansion, which features a brand new story mode and new playable characters including Robo Cop. If you’re interested in more videos about Mortal Kombat 11 make sure to check out our written review of the game over on GameSpot.com and the video review on our YouTube channel.

The new PlayStation 5 tech demo is seriously impressive, showcasing what next-generation games could look like running on Epic’s Unreal Engine 5.

You can watch the trailer again, and after that, check out a series of stills from the video embedded in this post. Be sure to click each image to view a full-size version.

The tech demo, “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” is not meant to represent what PS5 and Xbox Series X games will necessarily look like, but instead what Unreal Engine 5 is technically capable of allowing for. These stills are very impressive-looking, and it’ll be interesting to see how developers make use of the Unreal Engine 5 tech to power their new games.

Unreal Engine 5 will become available in a preview at the beginning of 2021, with a full release scheduled for later in the year. The existing Unreal Engine 4 also supports PS5 and Xbox Series X games.

Epic’s own game, the battle royale title Fortnite, will be a launch game for PS5 and Xbox Series X. It will be among the first games to use Unreal Engine 5, but the transition to the new engine won’t happen until 2021.

For more on Epic’s announcements around Unreal Engine 5, check out the stories below.

Coinciding with the announcement of Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games released a tech demo running on PlayStation 5 that showcases what the engine is capable of delivering in terms of graphics and overall presentation.

The new real-time demo is called “Lumen in the Land of Nanite.” According to Epic, the trailer is meant to showcase what the Unreal Engine 5 is technically capable of delivering in terms of real-time rendering details for next-generation games “and beyond.”

The Lumen in the Land of Nanite tech demo focuses on two of Unreal Engine 5’s “core technologies,” including Nanite and Lumen. In short, Nanite is a new “virtualized micropolygon geometry” technology that gives artists the ability to create “as much geometric detail as the eye can see.” For this tech demo, Epic used the Quixel Megascans library that features “film-quality” objects that feature “hundreds of millions” of polygons’ worth of detail.

The second of the technologies shown off in the video is Lumen, which Epic says is a “fully dynamic global Illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes.” Using Lumen, artists and designers are able to create “more dynamic scenes,” Epic said. This could include things like the sun angle for a particular point in the day and turning on a flashlight. “Lumen erases the need to wait for lightmap bakes to finish and to author light map UVs–a huge time savings when an artist can move a light inside the Unreal Editor and lighting looks the same as when the game is run on console,” Epic said.

The Lumen in the Land of Nanite tech demo is the product of “numerous teams and technologies,” Epic said. Importantly, this video is not meant to represent what PS5 and Xbox Series X games will necessarily look like, but instead what Unreal Engine 5 is technically capable of allowing for.

Unreal Engine 5 will become available in a preview at the beginning of 2021, with a full release scheduled for later in the year.

For more on Epic’s announcements around Unreal Engine 5, check out the stories below.

In addition to Fortnite, Epic Games is known for creating the Unreal Engine that is used by studios worldwide to create games, while Disney uses it to help film The Mandalorian. Epic has now announced the next version of the Unreal Engine, and it has bold ambitions.

Unreal Engine 5 promises to deliver “photorealism on par with movie CG and real life.” To showcase the power of the new engine, Epic created a tech demo called “Lumen in the Land of Nanite.” The real-time demo, which you can see below, is running on the PlayStation 5.

Two of the “core” technologies in Unreal Engine 5 are showcased in the video, including Nanite and Lumen. The full descriptions for these new technologies is below.

Nanite

“Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see. Nanite virtualized geometry means that film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine–anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data–and it just works. Nanite geometry is streamed and scaled in real time so there are no more polygon count budgets, polygon memory budgets, or draw count budgets; there is no need to bake details to normal maps or manually author LODs; and there is no loss in quality.”

Lumen

“Lumen is a fully dynamic global Illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes. The system renders diffuse interreflection with infinite bounces and indirect specular reflections in huge, detailed environments, at scales ranging from kilometers to millimeters. Artists and designers can create more dynamic scenes using Lumen, for example, changing the sun angle for time of day, turning on a flashlight, or blowing a hole in the ceiling, and indirect lighting will adapt accordingly. Lumen erases the need to wait for lightmap bakes to finish and to author light map UVs–a huge time savings when an artist can move a light inside the Unreal Editor and lighting looks the same as when the game is run on console.”

Unreal Engine 5 uses the Quixel Megascans library, which includes “film-quality objects” that are rendered with “up to hundreds of millions of polygons.” The PS5 tech demo trailer also shows off new physics and destruction elements, as well as what’s known as “convolution reverb and ambisonics rendering.”

The engine will be available, in a preview state, starting in early 2021 with the full release scheduled for later that year. In addition to the PS5 and Xbox Series X, the engine will support development on PS4 and Xbox One, as well as PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.

While developers wait, they can make use of the recent Unreal Engine 4.25 update, which introduced support for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Epic said development teams will be able to move from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 without issues thanks to the next-gen engine’s “forward compatibility” design.

Epic’s own development teams are going to use Unreal Engine 5 for their games, including Fortnite. The battle royale game will be a launch game for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, with the game set to shift to Unreal Engine 5 in mid-2021. The studio did not say what kinds of graphical upgrades will be available thanks to the new technology, however.

Another key part of Unreal Engine 5 is how Epic is making the engine even more attractive to developers. Starting right now, Epic won’t require developers to pay royalties on games made using the Unreal Engine until their game sales pass $1 million in gross revenue. This is a gigantic change because the threshold was previously $3,000 per quarter. The change is retroactive from January 1, 2020, and developers can find more details about this at the official FAQ.

This is just the latest developer-friendly push from Epic. The company’s Epic Games Store pays developers a greater share of revenue, giving out 88 percent to game-makers. This move has attracted developers big and small to release their games on the Epic Games Store, the latest example being Activision’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 remasters.

The Wonderful 101 is the latest in a long line of Wii U games to get a second chance at life on the Nintendo Switch. Platinum’s wacky Sentai superhero story was a true-blue made-for-Wii U experience: Using a combination of traditional buttons and hand-drawn symbols, you corral and control a mob of up to 100 characters who fight through beat-’em-up arenas, navigating reaction-based puzzle-platforming challenges and a litany of setpiece minigames. But something feels off about The Wonderful 101 Remastered. The seeds of Platinum’s best games are there–the snappy dodging and parrying, the clever writing and design, the demand that you hone the craft of controlling your characters–but it’s hard to appreciate them in a game that demands mastery over its complex mechanics without taking the time to properly explain how they work. Combined with new technical issues, The Wonderful 101 Remastered doesn’t just fail to make the generational jump, it forces us to question whether it warranted a second look.

The Wonderful 101 tells the story of Earth’s costumed global defense force, the Wonderful 100, who fight off an alien invasion. It’s a light, peppy romp across secret labs and cities under siege by aliens. Though there are 100 members, the narrative focuses on a few core, color-coded characters–trope-borne personas who exchange quips through their adventures.

Though the deeply campy storytelling creates some amusing moments, the story indulges a little too much in Sentai’s penchant for stretching out dramatic moments with sudden but ultimately inconsequential plot twists. Many a boss fight ends with you defeating your opponent and declaring victory, only for them to get up so you can beat them two or three more times. The jokes, good and bad, always overstay their welcome.

Thankfully, both the story and gameplay move at a very rapid pace. Levels jump from action to cutscene to puzzle to recurring setpiece minigames, including spaceship shoot-em-up sequences and Punch Out-style mech boxing. This is a game that’s supposed to move quickly and overload your brain with its massive scale, punchy wit, and great gameplay variety.

In theory, the blend of traditional action control and touchscreen gestures helps maintain that frenetic pace. You control a single member of the Wonderful 100 crew, who leads the entire group around in a mini mob of Pikmin-like pixel-people.

The team moves through each level, bouncing across platforms and fighting off waves of gigantic-looking aliens using the Wonderful 101’s curious, touchpad-controlled superpower, “uniting” the mob into giant weapons and tools for the leader. To build up your strength, you can rescue and deputize civilians into the Wonderful 100, increasing the maximum charge of your attacks. Like so many aspects of this game, the concept works well when you understand its mechanics, but it’s only explained in the broadest terms. It’s also used in puzzles, often without explanation, which creates unnecessary confusion.

Each of the core story heroes has a different weapon, which you summon by drawing a quick symbol, either using the right analog stick or the touchscreen in handheld mode. (Technically, you can also switch among the heroes using the second screen menu, which you can bring up picture-in-picture-style in the lower-right corner of the screen when you want it.) Each of the weapons has a number of uses in and out of combat. Wonder-Red, for example, summons a giant hand that can punch, but also turns giant gears and often grabs ledges and things in quick-time events. You also draw a large number of utilitarian abilities, like a hang glider, and contextual symbols for specific moments. Suddenly switching from thinking about pushing buttons to drawing shapes always manages to incite a small jolt of panicked excitement, whether you’re asked to do it mid-cutscene or to switch up your tactics during a fight.

The mechanic still feels very clever, especially in combat. Once you get past the early-game grunts, each enemy has specific weaknesses to exploit: Learning how to hit enemies hardest and how to counter their attacks makes for fast, but very tactical combat. Though there are a limited number of enemies, each level brings new combinations and environments to make situations more challenging and keep the intensity up, even when you have the tactic down for a specific opponent.

Unfortunately, though, the drawing mechanic becomes a liability in the Remaster. If you play on your TV, you have to use the right analog stick to draw, which isn’t precise. Even with plenty of time, it can take two or three tries to get the game to detect the criss-cross “claw” symbol instead of the similar wavy “whip” sign. Drawing is much easier in handheld mode, since you can use the touchscreen, but the small screen makes it harder to tell what’s going on, especially when the camera pulls way out to accommodate a very large enemy. It can be tough either way, though, as the size of your drawing is determined by how many characters you have on your team. It’s pretty easy to get carried away and run out of runway.

That said, it’s hard to tell what’s going on no matter what. The camera constantly feels misplaced. It gets too close during platforming sequences, making it hard to see where you’re going, and pull back too far during combat, making it hard to keep track of the character you control among the mass of tiny heroes running around.

Unfortunately, the drawing mechanic becomes a liability in the Remaster.

And sometimes, the game is too clever for its own good. Outside of combat, many of the rules and visual cues for how to address its puzzles, which are almost always timed, are unclear. Wonder-Green, who carries a gun, destroys a water tank in an early segment to put out a fire. From that point on, you are expected to know that, when you see anything hot, you use the gun to destroy a tank to put it out. Many hours later, when faced with an oncoming lava flow during a chase sequence, I didn’t think to shoot an unmarked tank to cool it before I was killed. While there is a logic that connects these puzzles, it’s a stretch to assume that I would see fire and think “shoot tank to put out the fire,” especially without any indication that the tank would cool off the lava. Wonderful 101 is littered with these kinds of logical leaps, often in puzzles that need to be solved under pressure. There’s nothing more frustrating than charging into a situation full-speed and dying without any idea of what you did wrong.

Many of The Wonderful 101’s issues–unexplained mechanics, finicky drawing controls, and so on–are exacerbated by the less-than-polished state of the Switch port. Technical issues with the save system, hit detection, camera controls, and drawing all created enough doubt in my mind that, when I experienced a problem or got stuck, I wondered whether I was misunderstanding the game or if something wasn’t working.

Even if the technical hiccups get fixed in a patch, though, the Wonderful 101 doesn’t stand the test of time. Remastered or not, I constantly felt like there were missing steps or if I was figuring things out too slowly to keep up with the hyperactive story and its multifaceted gameplay. What’s more, the transition to the Switch, even with its touchscreen capabilities has only exacerbated the game’s core problems. There’s a great concept and the good combat mechanics we know Platinum can achieve in there, but you’ll need a lot of patience to find them.

They say that truth is often stranger than fiction. Behind every bizarre story told in the movies, TV, and books we read, there’s a little known reality that inspired it. But what about an entire realm of weird, where not just a single oddity is contained, but an endless stream of bizarre stories that shake the mind and heart. Something like… the Twilight Zone?

Well, it turns out there is a very real inspiration for the Twilight Zone and, as with most of the subjects we cover on True Fiction, the source of it lies in the personal history of a person. That person is Rod Serling, who lived through war and was irrevocable changed by it. The impact his life experiences had on him were given life in the stories he told–real-life traumas explored through the science fiction of a strange alternate realm.

When it came to telling his story in True Fiction, writer and presenter Kurt Indovina leveraged his own love of Serling’s work. Kurt is a huge fan of Serling, and as longtime watchers of True Fiction will no doubt have noticed, his presenting style has striking similarities to Serling’s. So, it only made sense to hear from Kurt on how he approached this particular story and what it was like to work on an episode of True Fiction about Twilight Zone.

For more True Fiction, head over to the YouTube playlist, where you’ll find episodes on Twin Peaks, Jackie Chan, Star Wars, and more.

Kurt: There’s no greater influence on my hosting style for True Fiction than Rod Serling–the creator, writer, and host of The Twilight Zone. I knew the moment I started working on True Fiction that I wanted to emulate Rod Serling, the way he wrote, the way he spoke and articulated every word, and the commanding presence he brought to the intro of every episode. Oh, and of course, to wear a suit. So when the opportunity came to adapt his real story into an episode of True Fiction, the task was a little daunting.

My admiration for Rod stretches far beyond just his on-screen presence, how he spoke, or how he wrote. His unrelenting obligation to speak against the injustice of mankind has left an imprint on me. Rod was a World War II veteran who came back mentally and physically scarred from the horrors of war, and somehow managed to channel his inner torment into his writing. As a result, he created some of the most iconic pieces of television ever written. All of which served as Rod’s commentary on race, war, death, and man’s inhumanity to man. His fiction is the greatest reflection of his views on reality.

It’s remarkable that Rod’s legacy is known as the black and white face of an anthology science fiction, but his principles and the topics he addressed ranged in an endless spectrum of grays. And with this episode of True Fiction, I hope to broaden the view of one of the most important faces in the television medium.

When you think streaming services, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu immediately come to mind. However, aside from those most notable services, there are plenty of others you may or may not be familiar with. And GameSpot’s sister site CNET has decided to rank over 100 of them. Yes, 100.

Using a tiered system–from F Tier to S Tier–CNET’s Ashley Esqueda gave each of the services a total score, based on five categories: Price, Originals (quantity not quality), Back Catalog, Variety, and Accessibility. The opening example used in the video was YouTubeTV, which scored a 1 in Price ($50 a month), a 5 in Originals, an 8 in Back Catalog, a 10 in Variety, and a 10 in Accessibility. It scored a 34 in total, which lands it in the C Tier.

Below, you’ll find the full video where CNET breaks down these streaming services, which included plenty of ones you’ve probably never heard of.

There are a few notable services missing from the list. First is Plex, which at one time was just a way to share content from your computer with friends. However, it’s now shifted gears to be an ad-supported movie site, almost exactly like Crackle or IMDbTV. Because of this, it would land itself in the D Tier, using CNET’s ranking system.

Then, there’s the WWE Network, which is amazing if you love cheap PPVs. However, since the recent redesign, the UI is a bit rough, it’s not accessible on all Smart TVs since thew upgrade, and while the original content WWE produces is fantastic, it’s not making it as much anymore. More than likely, it would land in the C Tier. Also missing are NJPW World, Fite TV, and a few other very niche services.

Now that you know the ranking system, you probably need something new to watch. Consider listening to GameSpot’s weekly TV series and movies-focused podcast, You Should Be Watching. With new episodes premiering every Wednesday, you can watch a video version of the podcast over on GameSpot Universe or listen to audio versions on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.