Category: Games

According to Control developer Remedy Entertainment’s communications director Thomas Puha, making a cross-generational video game is a tricky challenge, especially when developers have fewer resources to work with on older hardware.

“Whenever you’re in this cross-generational point, to be blunt, it sucks,” Puha said on IGN’sNext-Gen Console Watch. “You have to support the previous gen, make sure that sings, and then whatever you bring to next-gen is still limited by the choices you made years ago for the previous generation. It’s not a very realistic thing, that this old game, we’re just going to remake everything and then bring it to next-gen. It’s just not like that. It’s not a reality for us, because you’re literally taking away resources that are building the future games and improving the engine for the future.”

Puha also explained that getting a game with a new engine to run smoothly on new console hardware is a process that takes several months to get right. As an example, he mentioned how Control’s game engine from August 2019 was updated so that it could offer more next-gen visuals, but this effectively broke everything that Remedy had created up to that point.

“When you get to the point where you have to get [a game] running on next-gen systems, on a new engine it takes several months just to get everything working,” Puha said. “Nothing works at first. The content looks wrong, the textures look wrong, the lighting is busted, because we’ve made all these improvements but then they’re incompatible with what we had in 2019. It took months–the game is running, we had it running back in summer of last year, but it didn’t have any of the nice things. It just took quite a while to get to the level where we had everything working that we had in the previous-gen version. Now we can actually start doing all that cool next-gen stuff.”

Puha is still optimistic for what future video games will look like on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, as developers have begun “scratching the surface” of what that hardware is capable of. Remedy recently recorded its best year ever in terms of the money it made despite releasing no games, making €41.1 million in revenue thanks in part to royalty income from Control and money it received from Epic to develop two new games exclusively for the Epic Games Store.

The Finnish studio has also increased its staff numbers by 11% to 275 employees and will release CrossFireX on Xbox later this year.

If you missed out on getting Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout‘s adorable Godzilla skin when it was in rotation last November, you’ll be happy to discover he’s coming back on March 24. The skin isn’t exactly the same, however, with the new version of Godzilla sporting a spicy new look inspired by Burning Godzilla from the 1995 Godzilla vs. Destoroyah.

Just like the last Godzilla skin, this one will cost you a hefty 10 Crowns, so you’d better get those wins up between now and March 24.

Though not mentioned in the announcement tweet, the new Godzilla skin is likely related to Godzilla Vs. Kong, which will release in theaters and on HBO Max on March 31. Mediatonic hasn’t said whether they plan to release a Kong skin as well, but we can only hope they’ll cater for Kong fans as well at some point.

Fall Guys is currently counting down towards its fourth season, which is due to start on March 22. The new future-themed season, called 4041, will bring new stages and modes to the game, as well as a set of futuristic outfits that include Among Us costumes.

Fall Guys studio Mediatonic was recently acquired by gaming giant Epic Games, though for now the acquisition hasn’t caused any major changes for the cutesy battle royale game–it’s still available on Steam, for one. Mediatonic is now working on releasing Fall Guys on Nintendo Switch and Xbox consoles, with the ports due out this summer.

Capcom has now announced the PC system requirements for Resident Evil Village on PC. The list has been released on the game’s Steam page, while a page on Capcom’s Japanese website goes into more detail about requirements for ray tracing.

The requirements were announced in a tweet on the game’s Japanese Twitter account, and picked up on the Resetera forums. Capcom has released three sets of system requirements, listing the minimum, recommended, and recommended for those who want to enable ray tracing.

As with past Resident Evil games, Village should run pretty well on lower-powered machines if you’re selective with your graphics settings, though players wanting to push the game to its max (especially now that ray tracing is an option) will need a solid rig.

The posts reveal that Resident Evil Village includes a “Prioritize Performance” mode for those with PCs at the lower end of the spectrum, which will run the game at 1080p/60fps on PCs that reach the minimum benchmark. “Framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes,” a note on the Steam system requirements reads.

The system requirements on the Japanese page also mention a graphics-focused game mode, which will run the game at 1080p/60fps on PCs that reach the recommended specs. The Japanese post includes an extra column for ray tracing-specific specs not found on the English Steam page, so we’ve included those details below.

Resident Evil: Village PC System Requirements

Minimum:

• OS: 64-bit Windows 10
• DirectX Version: DirectX 12
• Processor: Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
• Memory: 8 GB
• Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB or AMD Radeon RX 560 4 GB
• Storage: TBD

Recommended, No Ray Tracing:

• OS: 64-bit Windows 10
• DirectX Version: DirectX 12
• Processor: Intel Core i7-8700 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• Memory: 16 GB
• Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700
• Storage: TBD

Recommended, With Ray Tracing:

• OS: 64-bit Windows 10 version 2004 or later
• DirectX Version: DirectX 12
• Processor: Intel Core i7-8700 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• Memory: 16 GB
• Graphics Card:
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 2070 (4K/45fps)
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 2070 (4K/60fps)
  • AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (4K/45fps)
  • AMD Radeon RX 6800 (4K/45fps)
  • AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (4K/60fps)
• Storage: TBD

CW’s Batwoman has cast Krypton’s Wallis Day to take over the role of Kate Kane, the original Batwoman for the series that was played by Ruby Rose.

Spoilers ahead for the latest episode of Batwoman!

As reported by THR, this casting news was revealed during the latest episode of Batwoman, as Day’s Kate Kane was shown bandaged and being held hostage. She was shown alive yet unrecognizable due to the injuries from the plane crash that occurred at the start of season two.

It’s important to note that Kane is no longer Batwoman, and that Javicia Leslie – the first black actress to play the character in live-action role – will continue to be the series lead as Ryan Wilder.

Rose left Batwoman in 2020, and reports stated that her decision may have been due to her dislike of the long working hours demanded by being the lead of a 20-episode season.

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The decision was made initially to not recast the character, but showrunner Caroline Dries had been telegraphing her return and very much had no intention of her story simply disappearing. Furthermore, she wanted her to return to avoid the “bury the gays” TV trope that sees shows killing off gay and lesbian characters.

“As a lesbian who’s been working as a writer for the past 15 years, I’m well aware of the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope and I have no interest in participating in it,” said Dries in June, 2020. “That’s why it’s important to me as the showrunner to clarify any misinformation out there about Kate Kane and recasting Batwoman. Like you, I love Kate Kane — she’s the reason I wanted to do the show. We’ll never erase her. In fact, her disappearance will be one of the mysteries of season two. I don’t want to give away any of our surprises, but to all our devoted fans, please know that LGBTQ+ justice is at the very core of what Batwoman is and we have no intention of abandoning that.”

The rest of the season looks to explore where Kane has been and how this experience has changed her.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

This is a review of American Gods Season 3 finale, which premiered on Starz on March 21. Warning, spoilers below.

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American Gods has all the parts to create a richly layered story. Visually stunning, well-cast, with nuanced dissections of American culture and what does or does not make something deified at its heart. And yet the sum of its parts just feels lacking. There’s a hollowness behind the stunning visuals, a blandness to the dialogue that leaves you wanting something far more daring, and musical cues that can often make one a little cringe-y. It gets close to the mark, but still misses really nailing the point, smoothing over-complicated story matters with twisty visual stimuli and allusion rather than really standing for anything at its core.

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Focusing so much on the journey of Shadow Moon this season has ultimately weakened the beautiful patchwork quilt this story could ultimately be. A shame, considering we’ve reached the story’s major climax (Czernobog orgasm jokes aside).

It sort of breaks the heart to write this as a fan of the source material and so many people involved. The episode is—for all intents and purposes—ultimately fine, but having read the Neil Gaiman novel and loved the first season, there’s a longing for what American Gods could have really been that you feel in every decision it makes, especially during such a crucial point in the story. In the season three finale, Shadow Moon has finally made it to the World Tree at the heart of America, to hold vigil for his dead father, Wednesday/Odin. He knows Laura has killed Wednesday and lets her go despite Norse code. She connects with Bilquis as Shadow straps himself into the tree for nine days and nights of hell. In the end, that’s all that really happens until both Wednesday and Shadow Moon’s dead bodies disappear. A literal storm starts brewing at the end.

Revelations unfold: Technical Boy is more than he seems, and so is Mr. World—to an extent. Perhaps the most crushing blow of all is that of Shadow coming to understand that this vigil was actually something of a ruse to make Odin return to his most all-powerful form. Betrayal has a way of changing things, and the finale certainly sets up an interesting “what’s to come.” Whether or not it will be able to pull that off is another thing entirely.

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There’s a level of that Tyra Banks “we were all rooting for you!” meme-ified emotion going on in this review. Maybe one can care too much and be unable to just take this finale and this iteration of the tale for what it is and detach it from the history one has with the story. But from a viewer standpoint, it all just feels a bit slapdash and ultimately missing the heart of the story that was set up in its complicated and beautiful first season. Without the fury of someone like Orlando Jones’ Mr. Nancy, the love of the Jinn and Salim, and all the other little tales woven throughout Gaiman’s original story, American Gods doesn’t feel like it’s getting at the full scope of America and what drives it.

And that—especially as a viewer in 2021—is a very frustrating thing. Perhaps for more casual fans of the story, this suffices, but with a story this complicated, is there really such a thing? Only time and the number of people still watching (how poetic), will tell us this.

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