The internet doesn’t exist in the world depicted by the film Aliens, though variations of it crop up in the expanded universe. Nor does the idea of a digital society. There’s networked communications tech, but it consists of signals between bodies in deepest space, light years apart, of lonely video terminals in cramped dockloader apartments, and of maniacally collaged CCTV feeds of Marines getting their asses kicked, man. There’s no ocean of online interactions, corroding the everyday from all directions, just 1-to-1s through boxy, retro-futurist screens that are so dingy and inadequate it feels like Ripley and Burke are peering at each other through a letterbox. Small wonder, given that Aliens was released in 1986, when what would become the internet was still mostly the province of universities and the military.
Helldivers 2 director Johan Pilestedt has defended FromSoftware for the difficulty of Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erdtree.
As reported by PC Gamer, Pilestedt responded to someone on X/Twitter who complained about the intense difficulty of Shadow of the Erdtree, which has been a heavily discussed topic since its launch on June 21, 2024.
Pilestedt initially shared another post saying FromSoftware doesn’t make bosses hard for the sake of it, but for the feeling overcoming them gives players. “Indeed, this 1,000%,” Pilestedt said. “Good game design is evoking emotion more than anything.”
X/Twitter user @Indoor_Carrot responded, saying “the problem with this design philosophy is it only caters to a select audience. I tried Dark Souls 1. After defeating the first couple of bosses, I realized it wasn’t fun or rewarding. I only felt relief, not accomplished. I stopped playing Dark Souls because of this.”
Pilestedt disagreed. “A game for everyone is a game for no one,” he said, which is essentially the motto of his developer Arrowhead Game Studios. “Always cater to a select audience.”
FromSoftware games like Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice are famously difficult but have been praised across the board for their overall game design, challenge included.
IGN’s Shadow of the Erdtree review awarded it a 10/10, for example. “Like the base game did before it, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree raises the bar for single player expansions,” we said. “It takes everything that made the base game such a landmark role-playing game, condenses it into a relatively compact 20 to 25 hour campaign, and provides fantastic new challenges for heavily invested fans to chew on.”
Nintendo recently invited us to go hands-on with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition ahead of its 18th July release date. Below, both Zion and Jim have shared what they made of it.
Descendants, after a long wait, The First Descendant releases worldwide July 2on PS5 and PS4. To help you prepare for the action, we’re here with new gameplay details for characters Bunny, Valba, and Ajax, along with insights into the unique graphic features available on PS5 .
Not familiar? The First Descendant is a third-person online co-op looter shooter. In the game, you will become a Descendant, inheriting mysterious powers and tasked with protecting your homeland – the continent of Ingris – from alien invaders.
Launch content
Powered by Unreal Engine 5, The First Descendant is a next-generation looter shooter that focuses on the fun of grinding and growth. It’s a game where you collect and enhance various characters, unique-effect firearms, external components that boost character and skill performance, and modules to tune the performance of characters and weapons, presenting you with the challenge of creating your own unique build.
At launch, five new fields that have not been previously revealed will be added, along with 16 types of new end-game content called Instance Dungeons. Additionally, 16 types of Void Intercept Battles – large boss raids considered the highlight of The First Descendant – will also be introduced.
Additionally, Descendants, who are central to the game, will be added. In total, 19 Descendants will be introduced, including 14 original Descendants and 5 high-performance versions known as Ultimate Descendants.
Our most popular Descendant, Bunny, is known as an iconic mascot with a helmet resembling rabbit ears. Bunny wears a unique suit that can charge and discharge electrical energy, allowing her to run at incredible speeds. This suit not only enhances Bunny’s agility but also enables her to release stored electrical energy around her or concentrate it into a powerful focused beam, making her a formidable force on the battlefield.
Valby is my personal favorite character. She has a special ability to transform into water and create puddles at will, anytime and anywhere. While on water, Valby can use skills with reduced MP, allowing for more efficient use of abilities. This ability enables Valby to create puddles among enemies for quick movement or to liquefy and pass through obstacles, providing advantages in both offense and defense.
Our creative director’s top recommended Descendant is Ajax. As a tank dealer, Ajax provides a unique strategic element to the team. He possesses the incredible ability to distort physical space and summon protective shields for allies. These shields effectively block enemy attacks while allowing allied attacks to pass through unhindered, protecting allies and providing a tactical advantage. He ensures the safety of teammates on the battlefield while enabling them to launch attacks without interference.
PS5 Graphical features
Additionally, we are pleased to introduce the graphical features available at launch for the first time, specifically for PS5. Since last year’s Crossplay Open Beta, we have invested significant effort into optimizing and enhancing graphic quality for PS5.
Firstly, we added a Balanced Mode to the graphics settings, which was unavailable during the Beta. PS5 users can now choose from three modes: Fidelity, Balanced, and Performance, offering a variety of options to suit your preferences.
Additionally, we have implemented the high-resolution shadow mapping technique, Virtual Shadow Map (VSM), provided by Unreal Engine 5 after extensive optimization efforts, enhancing the overall visual quality.
Furthermore, we added options for Ray Tracing and AMD Frame Generation, offering choices for those who desire higher visual quality or improved performance.
The First Descendant’s development team is always listening to your feedback. Therefore, we invite you to the continent of Ingris to explore and share your valuable insights with us. The First Descendant launches July 2 on PS5 and PS4.
Developer Castle Pixel and publisher Playtonic Friends have announced Cattle Country, a new “cozy cowboy life-sim adventure” in the works for PC (via Steam). It promises pixel-art graphics, 18 romanceable characters, cattle to raise, bandits to fend off, and buried treasure to dig up, among other gameplay elements. Watch the announcement trailer above or check out the first screenshots in the gallery below.
Fishing, hunting, and farming will make up the core of the gameplay in what Castle Pixel and Playtonic Friends bill as a game that aims to be “Red Dead Redemption meets Stardew Valley.”
Playtonic Friends is the publishing arm of Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic, while Castle Pixel previously developed Blossom Tales and Rex Rocket.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
Fallen Aces is a stylish FPS lead pipe ‘em up with immersive sim elements, published by good gun-knowers New Blood Interactive. Your gumshoe ‘tagonist wakes up, hungover of brain, skint of wallet, and unshaven of face, to discover your apartment – undoubtedly reeking of smokerettes and dehydration wee – is being broken into by foes goonly and mookish. They take a while to boot the door down, which gives you a moment to observe the place and consider which of Fallen Aces’ expansive makeshift weapon selection you’d like to batter them with. Decisions, decisions…
After eating some fridge fruit, I prepare an ambush by flicking off the lightswitch, then hide behind a desk. When they break in, I bravely sneak up behind them and put the frying pan I picked up to work. The sound effects tell me this a quality bit of cookware. Probably cast iron. Barely a dent. In the pan.
A former Halo and Destiny executive producer at Bungie has said the live service model is “so much better for developers and players” than the one-off $60 or $70 purchase model.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Theorycraft Games CEO and former Halo: Reach and Destiny executive producer Joe Tung said the traditional method of buying video games, meaning to make a single payment of around $60 or $70, causes developers to make decisions which were not “in the best interest” of players.
“I always felt like, in the $60 boxed product model, I was having to make decisions that were not in the best interest of players,” Tung said.
The games as a service model is so much better for developers and players.
“It was in the best interest of: ‘How do we sell as many copies in the first 48 hours as we can?’ One of the huge strengths of the games as a service model is you can be long term, you can think long term in terms of what is best for the player, and how does that overlap with what is best for the company. I think it allows you to make much, much, much better decisions overall.”
“I would wager that any developer who has ever worked in the $60 box product model, up until the point where E3 was cancelled, has a story about the E3 build,” he said. “It’s like, let’s jam as much bulls**t vaporware into the build as we can in the next three months because we have to have a huge showing at E3, because it’s our one opportunity to talk to our audience before we launch the game.”
“I would have to wager that some hugely significant percentage of those E3 efforts ended up on the cutting room floor because they were half-baked and caused people to crunch and really make huge sacrifices to get it in,” Tung added. “That’s my favorite example of hugely impactful decisions that were not about what is best for the player.”
Live service, on the other hand, allows developers to continue working on games after launch, communicate with their audience to see what players actually want, and so on. Tung therefore believes “the games as a service model is so much better for developers and players.”
The topic has proved controversial amongst gamers, with many frustrated that even single player games now have microtransactions, preorder bonuses, early access periods, and so on, and as a result the $60 purchase, which is more commonly $70 in 2024, no longer grants everything a game has to offer.
Some developers have seemingly managed to thread the needle between one-off purchase and live service, however, with PlayStation and PC hit Helldivers 2 being the best recent example of a successful game balancing both models.
Game development studio and intergalactic war ministry Arrowhead have launched a new series of written update posts for players of Helldivers 2 to help keep the war record straight. Mostly, this is the usual case of somebody on the team gathering quotes as the developers batter their fingertips against keyboards to bring you, the video gamer, fresh cannons and what-have-you. But there is some insight into what the conflict-pushers at Arrowhead have enjoyed most about player actions over the last month, including bringing an entire planet to the liberated state of post-existence.
When I finished my review for Soulslike Lies Of P, the devs released a patch not long after that nerfed bosses and made things for ol’ Pinnochio easier overall. Sod’s Law struck that day… and it’s returned with a smirk. Shadow Of The Erdtree has just been patched, making its Shadow Realm Blessings stronger from the off, and in turn, things a little easier for everybody. Such is the life of a reviewer, eh.
Once again, the world is on the cusp of being taken over by the evil General Donald Morden and his Rebel Army. Only the Peregrine Falcon Squad, led by the heroic Marco Rossi, stand in the way of the Rebels establishing their New World Order. This could be the plot of just about any entry in the Metal Slug series, which is at its best when you don’t take it too seriously. Metal Slug Attack Reloaded, a remake of a microtransaction-laden gacha tower-defence mobile game, does its best to uphold the goofy tone of the series while stripping out the worst bits of the 2016 version.
At least, it does its best to take the frustrating bits out. The Switch version doesn’t have any microtransactions, thankfully – but it does still very much feel like a gacha game that expects you to log in every day and grind your way to victory. The result is an uneven but still enjoyable game that is constrained by its origins.
