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Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War on PC Will Require Up to 250 GB

Activision and Treyarch have revealed the PC specs for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and confirmed that it will require up to 250 GB of storage if you wish to run the latest Call of Duty with Ultra RTX settings.

Fortunately, for those who don’t need to run Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War on the highest settings, it is possible to download Multiplayer only for 50 GB on Minimum Specs and all game modes for 175 GB on Recommended and Competitive Specs.

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It’s also important to note that these requirements are specifically for launch, and will hopefully go down as time goes by. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has also dealt with storage requirements of over 200 GB, but Infinity Ward recently released a patch that gives PC players an option to uninstall specific game modes to reduce its file size.

The full list of official specifications for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War on PC are as follows;

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Minimum Specifications

  • OS: Windows 7 64-Bit (SP1) or Windows 10 64-Bit (v.1803 or higher)
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300
  • RAM: 8GB RAM
  • HDD (at launch): 50GB (MP only), 175GB (all game modes)
  • Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / GeForce GTX 1650 or Radeon HD 7950
  • DirectX 12 compatible system Required
  • Broadband Internet Connection Required

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Recommended Specifications

These are the recommend specs to run 60GFPS in most situations with all options set to medium:

  • OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update)
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X processor
  • RAM: 12GB RAM
  • HDD (at launch): 175GB HD space
  • Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 / GTX 1660 Super or Radeon R9 390 / AMD RX 580
  • DirectX 12 compatible system Required
  • Broadband Internet Connection Required

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Recommended Specifications (Ray Tracing)

  • OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update)
  • CPU: Intel i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 1800X
  • RAM: 16GB RAM
  • HDD (at launch): 175GB HD space
  • Video: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
  • DirectX 12 compatible system Required
  • Broadband Internet Connection Required

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Competitive Specifications

Here are the competitive specs to run at a high FPS for use with a high refresh monitor:

  • OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update)
  • CPU: Intel i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 1800X
  • RAM: 16GB RAM
  • HDD (at launch): 175GB HD space
  • Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 / RTX 3070 or Radeon RX Vega64 Graphics
  • DirectX 12 compatible system Required
  • Broadband Internet Connection Required

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Ultra RTX Specifications

Here are the Ultra RTX specs to run the game at a high FPS in 4K resolution with Ray Tracing enabled:

  • OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest Update)
  • CPU: Intel i9-9900K or AMD Ryzen 3700X
  • RAM: 16GB RAM
  • HDD (at launch): 250GB HD space
  • Video: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
  • DirectX 12 compatible system Required
  • Broadband Internet Connection Required

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War on PC will feature 4K graphics, uncapped framerate, RTX Shadows and Ambient Occlusion, NVIDIA DLSS and Reflex Technology, Ultrawide and Multi-Monitor support and much more. Additionally, developer Beenox worked closely with Treyarch and all other studios to “bring over 200 individual settings to fine tune the PC version of Black Ops Cold War.”

To further explain, RTX Shadows and Ambient Occlusion will allow for more photo-realistic shadows, NVIDIA DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) will use “AI to construct sharp, hi-fidelity images all while rendered fewer pixels,” and NVIDIA Reflex will “aid pros or pros-to-be in ensuring there is as little delay between their click or press and what happens on their screen as possible.”

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will be released on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on November 13, 2020.

For more, check out our review in progress for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s Beta, our best tips and tricks for the newest Dirty Bomb mode, everything else we know about the latest Call of Duty game.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

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

Warframe Details Its Next File Size-Shrinking Update

Warframe is currently going through a file downsize on PC, hoping to cut down its footprint by 15GB across three updates. Now, the second update in what developer Digital Extremes playfully refers to as “The Great Ensmallening” is on its way, and some details and screenshots have been revealed.

In a new Warframe forum post, Digital Extremes has explained that this coming update will focus on textures. “We are anticipating about 8-10 GB of savings with this round after a 10GB download,” the post says–which means that after an update, the overall size of the game will shrink as older files are jettisoned.

While compressing these textures, the developer decided to also touch-up and improve them–meaning that the game will actually look better than it did before.

As the two screens below show, the cut in file size has not led to a cut in image quality.

Before...
Before…
...and after.
…and after.

The update will arrive for the PC version of Warframe within a week.

Warframe will come to Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will improvements, and current-gen players will be able to carry their progress over.

Now Playing: How Warframe Plans To Improve In 2020

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PlayStation CEO Says That The “Future” Of VR Is Still Years Away

The PlayStation 5 begins its global rollout on November 12, and fans are wondering what the next several years of PlayStation are going to look like. Now, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan has spoken about all things PlayStation in a new interview, and he’s made some interesting comments on the immediate future of VR.

Talking to The Washington Post, Ryan said that he believes the “future” of VR is going to take some time. “I think we’re more than a few minutes from the future of VR,” he said. “We definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that.”

What this means, essentially, is that Sony still believes in VR–having sold 5 million PlayStation VR units–they don’t think the next big step in VR is happening for a while yet. “We’re very pleased with all the experience that we’ve gained with PlayStation VR, and we look forwarding to seeing where that takes us in the future,’ Ryan adds.

While the PS5 will not have a new VR headset at launch–or for a while, by the sound of it–it will support the PS4 VR headset.

Xbox CEO Phil Spencer has previously said that Microsoft is not pursuing VR for the Series X because no one is asking for it.

For more on Sony’s new system, check out GameSpot’s PS5 preview.

Now Playing: PlayStation 5 Unboxing

Destiny 2 Transmogrification Won’t Force You To Keep Old Armor

Destiny 2 is getting a lot of changes and new features with the Beyond Light expansion. But for Guardians who like to look fashionable, among the coolest is the addition of armor transmogrification–the ability to wear a piece of gear, but change it to look like another piece. Players have been holding on to a bunch of old pieces of armor waiting for transmogrification to kick in–but Bungie has revealed that you can finally throw all that stuff away.

Transmogrification is a common system in MMOs. Since there are so many pieces of gear in those games, offering so many different looks, transmogrification offers a lot of customization. If you like the stats of a helmet, but not its look, you can use transmog to make it look like a different helmet, while still maintaining the original’s stats; only the cosmetic aspect changes. On Twitter, Bungie revealed that the transmogrification system will work with your Collections tab, rather than armor pieces you’re storing in your vault or on your characters.

The Collections tab keeps a catalogue of every item you’ve earned in Destiny 2, even if you’ve dismantled it for parts or used it with the Infusion system to boost another piece of gear. That’s good news: it means you’ll have access to any piece of armor you’ve ever had for transmogrification. It previously sounded like you would need the actual pieces of gear, and not just the record of having earned it at some point, to make transmog work–and thus, players have been squirreling away their coolest-looking armor pieces, waiting for the system to go live.

So this announcement means Destiny 2 players can go ahead and delete any gear they were holding onto solely for use in transmogrification, and that means many of us will be able to clear up a lot of inventory slots by dismantling armor we don’t need. You should still hold onto any armor you particularly like because of its stats or perks, however.

It’s also worth noting that the transmogrification system isn’t coming with the launch of Beyond Light on November 10. It’s due sometime in Year Four, and if it’s not coming with the expansion, that means it’s not likely until at least early 2021. So while it’s good news that you don’t have to hoard armor for the next three months, we’re still going to have to wait for more armor customizations to actually hit the game.

Now Playing: Destiny 2: Beyond Light – Official Launch Trailer

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Ubisoft CEO Says Beyond Good And Evil 2 Is “Progressing Well”

Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still in the works at Ubisoft, and is apparently progressing nicely. In Ubisoft’s latest earnings report, CEO Yves Guillemot fielded a question about the long-in-development sequel following the departure of Michel Ancel, creator of the series, from the games industry.

Guillemot didn’t drop anything too revealing about the game, but he gave a brief update on how things are going.

“The game is progressing well,” Guillemot said. “The world is really fantastic; as you could see, Netflix also decided to take that universe and create a movie with it. So there’s a lot of progress in that team and the game is coming along very well.”

The Netflix movie was announced in July, and will be directed by Detective Pikachu’s Rob Letterman. Last we heard, it was still in early development.

A release date for Beyond Good and Evil 2 has not yet been announced; a 2021 release is a possibility, but in no way confirmed. It’s also unknown, at this point, which systems the game will launch on.

Ubisoft also announced the delays of Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six: Quarantine. They won’t arrive until after March 2021.

Ancel, incidentally, is under investigation in the wake of his departure for the work environment he fostered.

Now Playing: Beyond Good & Evil 2 Gameplay And Stage Presentation | Ubisoft E3 2018

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Rogue Planet Discovered Flying Through Milky Way Without a Star

There’s a “rogue planet” flying through the Milky Way galaxy — a free-floating world without a host star. Is it actually a Death Star? The worldships of Marvel villains Annihilus or Galactus? The planet-sized Transformer Unicron? In the year 2020, surely anything is possible but, alas, no.

In a newly published study, scientists announced they have discovered a rogue planet. It appears to be on the smallish side as far as exoplanets go, with a mass reportedly between that of Earth and Mars.

“Our discovery demonstrates that low-mass free-floating planets can be detected and characterized using ground-based telescopes,” announced the study’s co-author Andrzej Udalski, principal investigator of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) project led by the University of Warsaw in Poland.

While astronomers have discovered 4,000 exoplanets to date — and that there may be far more rogue planets out there than there are planets with host stars — detecting a rogue planet is more difficult than it seems because there’s no light from a host star for scientists to use to help spot the planet.

The OGLE project, utilizing the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, spotted the rogue planet using a technique known as gravitational microlensing.

As Space.com explains, this planet-hunting method, “involves watching foreground objects pass in front of distant background stars. When this happens, the closer body can act as a gravitational lens, bending and magnifying the star’s light in ways that can reveal the foreground object’s mass and other characteristics.”

The study’s lead author, Przemek Mroz at the California Institute of Technology, explained just how “extremely slim” the chances of such a microlensing event are because it requires perfect alignment of the light source, the telescope lens, and the observer. “If we observed only one source star, we would have to wait almost a million years to see the source being microlensed,” Mroz said.

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For more science news, read up on the evidence of a parallel universe where time runs backward, a cosmic cloud that has some people claiming “Galactus is coming!“, NASA’s discovery of water on the moon, a black widow star that’s a source of gamma radiation, the frightening 50-50 chance that we really are living in a simulation, and watch footage of the Osiris-Rex probe touching down on an asteroid.

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Nvidia RTX 3070 – Is This The Card To Get?

To accompany our review of the Nvidia RTX 3070, we had a discussion around our benchmark results, which situations it would make sense to upgrade to the card, and how availability can affect your decision. You can check out the full results of our benchmark in our written review, but to summarize it, the RTX 3070 essentially performs on par with the RTX 2080 Ti. That’s impressive considering that the RTX 3070 goes for around $500 MSRP and that the 2080 Ti was last generation’s enthusiast-level card that sold for over $1000.

If you’re trying to get top-notch performance at 4K, the RTX 3080 is a better card but the 3070 can certainly hold its own at that resolution. At 1440p, the performance gap closes somewhat, especially when games start to become more CPU-bound–that’s where the RTX 3070 really shines.

It can be difficult to actually find an RTX 3070 for sale, however. Nvidia has struggled to keep supply up to meet demand and said that things probably won’t get easier until later in 2021. In light of the recent news from AMD about its Radeon RX 6000 series video cards, you might have more options when those cards launch later this year–and we touch on that topic a bit here.

Overall, if you’re still on a GTX 10 series (or GTX 9 series) video card, and have been holding out for a more significant upgrade, the RTX 3070 is one of the best options for its price and performance. If you’re using an RTX 2070 (or better), you won’t get that big of a benefit unless you’re really itching to get better FPS in your games. Ray tracing and DLSS are becoming increasingly common so these RTX cards are more appealing now, and the 3070 makes a strong case as the one to get.

PS5 Custom Plate Maker Apologize After Confusion

A company promising customized PlayStation 5 faceplates has come under scrutiny recently after their website briefly disappeared and their social media presence became temporarily hard to find. Now, the company is back online and promises that all orders for custom PS5 plates will be fulfilled.

When the PlayStation 5 teardown video has published the team at Customize My Plates, saw an opportunity to offer custom replacement PlayStation 5 plates with designs separate from the standard white that Sony offers by default.

Enter PlateStation5.com, the former name and web domain for a UK-based company selling unofficial, third-party PS5 accessories. Custom Plates LTD has no relationship with Sony in any capacity.

Custom Plates’ initial PS5 faceplates were popular enough that demand quickly sky-rocketed and sites, including our own, covered the products. But a confusing name change and social media blackout made some customers question the validity of the service.

In an email to IGN, Custom Plates confirmed copyright was one of the reasons for the name change as “a certain console provider’s lawyer recently ‘suggested’ a few changes to our website.” The company also confirmed copyright issues as a reason for the name change on Twitter.

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Custom Plates told IGN that it was aware of some of the concerns online about the business. The team feels that it “communicated our production delays transparently,” through a recent update on Twitter which outlined a 3-week delay on orders and promised a full refund for anyone who requests one.

“I think that’s fairly uncommon for your average vanishing venture,” they wrote in the email.

Custom Plates also sent IGN a screenshot of what they claim to be over $20,000 in refunds the company already paid out.

“Our site’s level of success hit like a suckerpunch,” Adam from Custom Plates writes in an email to IGN. “We misjudged demand and disappointed hundreds of supporters who helped us get off the ground.”

“It truly sucks not coming through for them. We can only say we’re sorry and that it won’t happen again. We’ve suspended all sales. When they go live again, every single one will be fulfilled without fail, without delay.”

Adam argued that suspending sales and refunding money to customers is proof this is a legitimate business.

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Without a physical product in hand, it’s understandable that customers can get nervous, especially from a new business. Situations arise on platforms like Kickstarter where new ventures over-promise and under-deliver, or sometimes never deliver.

Custom Plates still offers full refunds for customers but hopes its refund policy and transparency can ease customer concerns. “When the plates hit, there will be no doubt,” the company says. “We’re here for the long haul.”

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Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Pikmin 3 Deluxe Review Discussion and Majora’s Mask’s Anniversary – NVC 532

Pikmin 3 Deluxe, the final Partner Showcase Direct, and Majora’s Mask are the highlights of this week’s Nintendo Voice Chat. Join Casey DeFreitas, Peer Schneider, Tom Marks, and special guest O’Dell Harmon Jr. for this week’s ride through the world of Nintendo. First, it’s Majora’s Mask’s 20th anniversary, and the panel shares their favorite moments from this spooky Zelda adventure. Speaking of spooky, we discuss the first time a video game ever truly scared us. Plus, a discussion of IGN’s Pikmin 3 Deluxe Review, and a look at No More Heroes, Age of Calamity, and more from the latest Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase.

Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia Giveaway: One winner will receive a Nintendo Switch System, a Bakugan Switch skin, and a digital code for Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia. 10 other winners will receive Bakugan skins. This is only open to United States residents, sorry!  Subscribe to Nintendo Voice Chat on YouTube and then email us at [email protected] with the subject line Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia Nintendo Switch Sweepstakes to enter. You have until Nov 4 at 12am PT to send us that email!

Timecodes!

  • 00:00:00 Welcome!
  • 00:02:17 Majora’s Mask retrospective
  • 00:11:48 The first video game that scared us
  • 00:29:48 Pikmin 3 Deluxe review discussion
  • 00:39:36 Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase
  • 01:00:53 Games out this week
  • 01:03:05 What we’re playing

Games out this week:

  • Carto – 10/27, $20
  • Dungreed – 10/27, $15
  • Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty – 10/27, $30
  • Pikmin 3 Deluxe – 10/30, $60
  • Pixel Puzzle Makeout League – 10/30, $15

NVC is available on your preferred platform!

You can also Download NVC 532 Directly Here

You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We’re all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.

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Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.

The Mandalorian: 12 Other Sci-Fi Westerns To Watch, Ranked

The Mandalorian: 12 Other Sci-Fi Westerns To Watch, Ranked – GameSpot

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The original Star Wars movie took influence from the many films and TV shows that creator George Lucas had grown up with in the ’50s and ’60s, such as sci-fi serials, World War II movies, and Japanese samurai films. Another key influence was the western genre. From the desert landscape of Tatooine and the Mos Eisley cantina to direct visual parallels with classics such as The Searchers and Once Upon a Time in the West, Lucas’s love of the genre was clear. And with The Mandalorian Season 2 premiering this week, the western influence is still very present in Star Wars.

Star Wars was not the first sci-fi movie to take influence from the western–Michael Crichton’s Westworld had been a hit back in 1973. But Lucas’s film appeared at a time when neither genre was considered popular–the heyday of the western was way back in the ’50s, and very few sci-fi movies had been successful in the earlier part of the ’70s. But, of course, that changed in the summer of ’77, when Star Wars became the biggest movie of all time and sci-fi was suddenly a hot property again. And while the western itself has yet to have a repeat of its earlier popularity, the genre has continued to be woven into science-fiction stories ever since.

The Mandalorian is the latest example of a sci-fi story that takes direct influence from stories of the Wild West, with its epic landscapes, lone gunslinger, and a soundtrack that echoes Ennio Morricone’s classic spaghetti western scores. Before the series premiered last year, star Pedro Pascal spoke about how Lucas’s love of westerns carried straight through to the new series. “I think that George Lucas played with the western undertones with the first movie and now they’re taking the suggestions of that tone and infusing it with steroids,” he told Variety.

The Mandalorian Season 2 premieres on Disney+ this week. To get ready, we’ve taken a look back at previous sci-fi western movies. Some are classic blendings of these two seemingly disparate genres, while other less successful examples show that it is not always easy. And once you’ve read this, check out our look at 10 things we want from The Mandalorian Season 2.

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12. Wild Wild West (1998)

12. Wild Wild West (1998)

Wild Wild West was based on an ambitious TV show that ran between 1965 and 1969 and focused on a pair of secret agents who work to protect President Ulysses S. Grant during the 1800s. The film is a mix of sci-fi, action, and comedy set in an alternative Old West, that was clearly designed to replicate the success of star Will Smith and director Barry Sonnenfeld’s previous film, Men in Black. Sadly almost none of it works, and the end result is a hugely expensive but utterly unfunny, unexciting, and deeply annoying movie, that swept the Razzies and became one of the decade’s most notorious flops.

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11. Jonah Hex (2010)

11. Jonah Hex (2010)

Jonah Hex is based on the DC comic book of the same title, and stars Josh Brolin as a disfigured bounty hunter with mystical powers in 19th century America. Despite the acclaimed source material and impressive cast (also including Michael Fassbender, Megan Fox, and John Malkovich), the movie was a notorious box office failure, and its extremely short running time (73 minutes before the credits roll) suggested that much of it ended up on the cutting room floor. Thankfully, Hex was better served by his more recent appearance on the DC show Legends of Tomorrow.

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10. The Dark Tower (2017)

10. The Dark Tower (2017)

Although there have been a huge number of Stephen King adaptations made over the years, it wasn’t until 2017 that a movie based on his much-loved Dark Tower series emerged. But despite initial promises of sequels and spin-off TV shows, the movie was a critical and commercial bomb, meaning we’re unlikely to see another attempt for some time. The books are an ambitious mix of sci-fi, fantasy, and westerns, but despite good casting (Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey), the film is a muddled mess that captures little of the ambition and inventiveness of the books.

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9. The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

9. The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

An earlier mix of westerns and sci-fi, The Valley of Gwangi is most notable for the dinosaur effects by stop-motion pioneer Ray Harryhausen. It’s set in Mexico at the start of the 20th century, and focuses on a cowgirl from a struggling rodeo who finds a cursed hidden valley where prehistoric creatures roam, including the terrifying Allosaurus known as Gwangi. While the film isn’t in the same league as other Harryhausen monster movies of the era, such as One Million Years B.C. or Jason and the Argonauts, it’s solid B-movie fun. Who doesn’t enjoy the sight of cowboys fighting dinosaurs?

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8. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

8. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

While the original Star Wars played with western tropes, the spin-off Solo embraced them in a far more overt way. Long before Ron Howard replaced Phil Lord and Christopher Miller as director, producer Kathleen Kennedy stated that the move would have a “western feel,” while cinematographer Bradford Young said that one of his biggest influences visually was Robert Altman’s acclaimed revisionist western McCabe and Mrs Miller. Many of the movie’s biggest set-pieces are directly inspired by ones often seen in westerns, such as the train heist and the space saloon gambling scenes, while stylised shots like the one above are straight out of movies such as High Noon and A Fistful of Dollars.

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7. Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

7. Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Before he became showrunner on The Mandalorian, Jon Favreau directed this big budget sci-fi western, which unfortunately bombed at the box office. Nevertheless, Favreau manages to blend both genres without making the movie a pastiche, and ultimately, having aliens invade a town in the Wild West is no less ridiculous than the same thing happening in contemporary settings. Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde all play their roles with the right mix of seriousness and humor.

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6. Outland (1981)

6. Outland (1981)

The 1962 film High Noon is one of the most influential westerns of all time, and Outland is pretty much a futuristic remake. Sean Connery plays Federal Marshal William O’Niel, who is assigned the job of protecting a titanium ore mining outpost on a distant moon. Unfortunately, the mine’s corrupt boss is running a drug smuggling operation and hires a team of assassins to deal with O’Niel. Director Peter Hyams originally wanted to make a traditional western, but the unpopularity of the genre in the early ’80s–combined with the huge recent success of Star Wars–led him to set the movie in space. The film was met with mixed reviews at the time, but it’s an interesting reworking of familiar themes and Connery makes for a charismatic western hero.

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5. Prospect (2018)

5. Prospect (2018)

The Mandalorian isn’t Pedro Pascal’s first foray in sci-fi westerns. In 2018, he starred in this drama as a mysterious prospector hunting for rare gems on a remote moon, who comes up against a father and his teenage daughter looking for the same thing. Prospect’s limited budget works in its favor, allowing for an intense, small-scale character drama, with the alien world convincingly created in the striking Hoh Rainforest near Washington’s Olympic National Park.

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4. Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

4. Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Before he became an acclaimed indie director, John Sayles wrote clever, funny B-movie scripts for films such as Alligator, Piranha, and The Howling. He also penned this witty sci-fi reworking of the popular 1960 western The Magnificent Seven (itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai), which was produced by Roger Corman to cash in on the success of Star Wars. George Peppard plays an intergalactic mercenary named, erm, Cowboy, who is hired to save the planet Akir (a homage to Kurosawa) from an evil warlord. The movie is also notable for its models and visual effects, impressively created on a tiny budget by a young James Cameron.

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3. Serenity (2005)

3. Serenity (2005)

Serenity was the movie spin-off from Joss Whedon’s much-loved but cancelled TV show Firefly, and it allowed Whedon to resolve various plot strands and give the series the finale it deserved. Like the show, Serenity takes thematic inspiration from classic westerns, as a gang of mismatched heroes explore new territory in outer space and try to escape a ruthless killer. The bigger budget and scale also allows Whedon to draw visuals parallels with westerns, with the vista of space and alien landscapes shot in an evocative widescreen style.

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2. Westworld (1973)

2. Westworld (1973)

Michael Crichton made his directorial debut with this classic sci-fi western about robot cowboys malfunctioning in the Wild West-themed amusement park of the title. Yul Brynner plays one of the decade’s most iconic villains, the ruthless and dispassionate killing machine known only as the Gunslinger, who was based on the character Brynner played in The Magnificent Seven. Westworld was followed in 1976 by the inferior sequel Futureworld, and was more recently rebooted on TV by HBO.

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1. Back to the Future Part III (1990)

1. Back to the Future Part III (1990)

While the second Back to the Future movie was a sprawling, time-hopping adventure, the hugely entertaining third film was mostly set in one location and time period–the town of Hill Valley in 1885. The setting allowed director Robert Zemeckis to throw in many western homages, from a railroad heist to a High Noon-style showdown with Biff, while Marty uses the name “Clint Eastwood” to hide his identity. Of course, it’s a sci-fi movie too, with a flux-capacitor equipped locomotive blasting 100 years into the future at the movie’s climax.

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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company