You can’t keep a good deal down. Target, Best Buy, and Walmart still have the Xbox Series X down to $349. That’s $150 off the MSRP of a phenomenal current-gen video game console complete with a 4K Blu-ray compatible disc drive. This is a better deal than what we saw during Black Friday or Cyber Monday. It even arrives before Christmas, and this would make an amazing Christmas gift.
For Walmart, note that this Xbox is in stock in select areas. If you see it for $349, then it’s in stock and ready for delivery in your zip code. However, if you see the price at $399.99, then it’s out of stock and likely sold by a Walmart marketplace vendor.
Best Xbox Series X Deal: $349
For the record, this is a far better deal than the $439 price we saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Sometimes it pays to wait, apparently, even during the biggest sale event of the year. But it probably doesn’t pay to wait right now, as stock will likely be limited, and the price could go up any time.
The Xbox Series X is a current generation system able to drive 4K games at up to a glorious 120fps. It is technically a more powerful system than the PS5 and games that are compatible with both consoles usually perform better on the Xbox console. Compared to the $300 Xbox Series S, the X features more powerful hardware to enable it to run games in 4K (the Xbox Series S runs games at 1440p). The Xbox Series X also has a disc drive that can play 4K Blu-ray movies and physical game media and 1TB of internal storage.
Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 for $95.99
Target recently dropped the price of the professional-grade Xbox Series X Elite Series 2 Core Wireless Controller in Red/Black to $95.99. It’s less expensive than the Black/White and Blue/Black variants. This controller wasn’t discounted at all during Black Friday and Cyber Monday and would make for an awesome holiday gift for any Xbox gamer who appreciates pro gaming features like adjustable-tension thumbsticks, wrap-around rubberized grip, and shorter hair trigger locks.
The creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s has pulled an official Roblox game based on the indie horror smash hit, calling its release “a huge blunder”.
Fans noticed Five Nights at Freddy’s: Survival Crew, developed by Metaverse Team Frights, pop up within Roblox and, as you’d expect, pounced upon it.
“Welcome aboard as Fazbear Security’s newest team member. You and your crew will be on night duty at all Fazbear Entertainment’s properties,” reads the official blurb. “We don’t anticipate you having any trouble (then again, we never did before either and look what happened…). But if something seems out of place, you can always use the handy charging stations located throughout our properties to overload the electrical systems and shock any wayward animatronics back into compliance. Can we count on you to keep things quiet until morning?”
However, fans quickly realised it was an unfinished mess and even broken in parts. Amid an emerging backlash, Cawthon took to Reddit to explain what had happened. “What a screwed up day,” he began. “Yes, there is an official Roblox game being worked on; I’m actually a big Roblox fan and play it a lot with my kids. But the fact that this was released today is one of the most baffling, insane, things to ever happen in my 10 years of working on Five Nights at Freddy’s.
“This is a game in its infancy; temp assets; temp gameplay, unfinished everything. The fact that it got dropped today suddenly on the public just blows my mind.”
Cawthon went on to insist the release of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Survival Crew was the result of a “huge misunderstanding” caused when he approved a skin. “Apparently there was a huge misunderstanding when I approved a skin, and it was interpreted as release the game,” he said.
Apparently there was a huge misunderstanding when I approved a skin, and it was interpreted as release the game.
Cawthon pulled the game as soon as he noticed it had gone live, he said, but of course not before the internet had noticed. “I obviously took the game down immediately,” he said. “So despite how difficult it might be to overlook this… well, no, I don’t think this can be overlooked. It was a huge blunder.”
Cawthon promised to fix the launch for 2024, insisting the current build is not ready for release. “Again, I hope everyone can at least believe me when I say that this was a game in its testing phases and was in no way ready to be released to the public. I, myself, have never even played it yet. So again, catastrophic misunderstanding, and I apologize. Will fix.”
It’s a bizarre situation that has resulted in some head scratching from the FNAF community and requests to cut down on the microtransactions.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Sensitive military documents have once again appeared on the forums of World War 2 massively multiplayer online game War Thunder.
As reported by Task and Purpose, documents related to the M2A2 Bradley Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicle were posted on the forums, and while not legally classified, still contain in depth details the military considers sensitive.
The post shared two pages of the technical manual for M2A2 Bradley, which included intricate details on the hatch, turret assemble, and the spall liner assembly. The documents are not intended to be passed beyond the U.S. Department of Defense and its contractors.
It’s unclear why these documents, which were removed after a few minutes, were uploaded to the forums, but they appeared first on Reddit and Discord according to developer Gaijin Entertainment’s founder Anton Yudinstev.
This isn’t the first time sensitive military documents have appeared on the War Thunder forums, with genuinely classified information having been shared several times in the past.
The game celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2023, but in our original review, IGN said: “War Thunder soars high, even with the weight of its bloated menus holding it down.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Larian is closing out 2023 with yet another Baldur’s Gate 3 update, and as usual, it’s had loads of fun writing the patch notes.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Hotfix #15, now live, isn’t a game-changing update by any means, but it still makes a number of important improvements and fixes to the sprawling Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Chief among them are fixes for crashes, blockers, and gameplay issues.
“Have you found some characters’ faces turning into stretched eldritch horrors with pits of flesh in place of eyes?” Larian asks in the patch notes published to the Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam page. “That should not be a problem anymore!”
The patch notes are published in full below, but I want to draw your attention to the aforementioned fix. Here’s the relevant line:
“Fixed several cases of what we’ve dubbed the Pinocchio issue, where characters’ noses (and cheeks) get stretched in cinematics. They also happen to lose their eyeballs, turning the sockets into pits of flesh.”
That really paints a picture, doesn’t it? I haven’t had this particular bug during my ongoing playthrough, but I kind of wish I had now.
More seriously, the hotfix also addresses a bug I have encountered quite a bit: your followers not jumping after you. “Fixed companions not being able to jump when following the player character,” the patch notes read. Huzzah!
As Larian says, this hotfix also addresses an issue that was preventing players from loading a save if the mods used had changed. “Bear in mind some saves might still not load depending on the mods that have changed, but the menu should now let you continue,” Larian said.
Here are the Baldur’s Gate 3 Hotfix #15 patch notes in full:
CRASHES AND BLOCKERS
Fixed a potential crash during autosave after moving to another level.
Fixed a multiplayer crash that could occur for the client when the host loads a savegame after a Game Over screen.
Fixed a crash related to deleted physics objects.
Fixed a crash that would occur when you disarmed an NPC twice during combat and made them drop two different weapons (e.g. because they were dual-wielding), incapacitated them, and ended the combat without killing them, and then the incapacitating condition got removed.
Fixed not being able to load a savegame that was started with a mod that’s now missing.
Fixed a crash that could occur on Xbox when losing internet connection while editing a lobby name.
Fixed a potential crash on Xbox related to the game checking whether you have the Deluxe Edition.
Fixed a crash that could occur when swapping to Honour Mode.
Fixed a crash that could occur when changing levels.
PERFORMANCE AND CODE
Fixed potential performance issues at the end of the cinematic where Shadowheart in the Shadowfell.
Fixed an issue related to lava bubbles near the Sentient Amulet in Grymforge causing savegames to become very large.
Fixed a memory issue when closing containers on controller.
Fixed the Low Model Quality option sometimes not working as expected.
Fixed an issue that could make certain special items, like the Idol of Silvanus, enter the wrong state when decluttered to a Traveller’s Chest.
Reduced memory usage related to animation skinning.
MULTIPLAYER
Fixed the Traveller’s Chests sometimes disappearing when changing to or from Honour Mode in the Multiplayer Settings.
Fixed a multiplayer issue where, if the host was controlling a companion and a split-screen client joined the game, the client would gain control of the host’s avatar.
Fixed a multiplayer issue where a reconnecting player wouldn’t get their characters assigned back to them correctly.
Fixed Player 2 not being able to prepare spells if Player 1 moves their focus during a split-screen game.
FLOW AND GAMEPLAY
Addressed an issue that prevented you from talking to NPCs at camp when going to camp via the Long Rest button.
Fixed some wrong character behaviours likely introduced in Patch 4.
The ‘Deal with the Devil’ quest now accounts for different outcomes in the Epilogue.
Karlach should now get her scene in , regardless of whether she’s an avatar or a companion.
Fixed companions not being able to jump when following the player character.
Fixed an issue where ending the tutorial with only Lae’zel alive prevented you from saving the game in Act I.
Fixed Gale’s dialogue ending abruptly when you ask him what he wanted to show.
Fixed player factions sometimes becoming hostile towards each other when they shouldn’t.
Fixed Create or Destroy Water only casting Create Water at Level 2.
OTHER FIXES
The Korean language pack is now enabled on Mac.
Fixed some weapon textures.
Fixed several cases of what we’ve dubbed the Pinocchio issue, where characters’ noses (and cheeks) get stretched in cinematics. They also happen to lose their eyeballs, turning the sockets into pits of flesh.
Fixed equipment tooltips opened via the Inventory sometimes randomly closing on controller without player input.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Fortnite must be going through its third awakening right now. I haven’t played a single round of Battle Royale for weeks, and that’s mainly because I can no longer make it past the starting menu without running face-first into a flurry of full-sizedspin-offs framed as new game modes. Fortnite Rocket Racing, an arcade racer that mixes ideas from both Rocket League and Fortnite, is one of them – and while it’s very much in its infancy, this barebones first draft is fun enough to call it the beginning of what could become a great standalone racing game one day. But, even with 26 decently-designed maps, seamless integration into Fortnite’s broader progression systems, and easy-to-setup cross-platform multiplayer for up to 12 players, Rocket Racing struggles to stay fresh after you’ve seen through the cracks of its simplistic car handling and questionable multiplayer balance. Even with a great idea at the center of its circuit, it’s difficult to declare this a Victory Royale.
Don’t let the Rocket League tie-in confuse you; Rocket Racing only shares its association with the previous game developed by Psyonix in that it also features toy cars doing physics-defying stunts. Instead, Rocket Racing tastefully borrows inspiration from games like Distance, Rollcage, Wipeout, and GRIP: Combat Racing. There are 12 cars on the map, each trying to reach the finish line first – pretty standard stuff, but Rocket Racing’s twist on that formula is that drifting fills up your boost meter similar to Mario Kart, allowing you to zoom past the competition after gaining enough momentum. There are no items or weapons on the map like you’d find in similar combat racers; instead, your sole focus is on maintaining your max speed while selectively drifting, boosting, and generally avoiding other players or obstacles that would slow you down.
This is a strong concept on its own, only made better by the added layer of depth jumping and flying introduces. You can tap a button to shoot your car into the air, and holding that same button down makes you fly (at the cost of your vehicle’s speed). Likewise, you can use your car’s jump and flight controls to quickly navigate out of the path of an obstacle by clinging to a wall or ceiling – kind of like in Distance. Keeping things interesting, it’s great that each map presents different obstacles and alternate pathways that force you to choose your approach carefully, since you can easily miss speed boosts placed on the track or drift into a hazard, causing you to explode and respawn somewhere behind the rest of the pack.
Speed boosting is the name of the game, and there are several ways you can quickly boost ahead of the crowd… at least in theory. All this boosting and thrusting feels and sounds good in action, but there are a few esoteric systems under the hood which don’t always feel transparent or fair – and that’s where Rocket Racing’s problems begin to appear. For instance, hitting the gas on the green light at the beginning of each match can give you up to 100% extra speed depending on your exact timing… but even when I timed it just right, it felt like I was consistently only landing 35-40% boosts.
Its quick races can sit comfortably in moments between other activities.
It’s nice that if you get too far behind, Rocket Racing goes out of its way to help you catch up with everyone else near the rear without putting in much effort. But even when I’m clearly ahead of everyone else, it seems like my drifting and tight steering don’t go quite as far to keep me ahead. Other players will miraculously appear out of nowhere, taking the lead just in time to steal my first place spot before I reach the finish line. It’s understandable that there are protections in place to keep matches more interesting to the very end – especially considering the vast performance chasms Fortnite attempts to cover in its cross-platform matchmaking – but when Rocket Racing punishes you for doing well, it can speedily suck the fun out of playing competitively.
As with basically every other Fortnite game, there isn’t much story or setup to worry about. You just tap a button to begin matchmaking, and soon you’ll be off. To its benefit, Rocket Racing is one of those enjoyable casual games that sits comfortably in moments between other activities, seeing as how each match only lasts for three laps – or about three minutes. You’re definitely not committing to a 15 or 20 minute multiplayer match ala Fortnite Battle Royale (you can probably finish four or five races in that same time), and being tied into Fortnite’s popularity means you’ll rarely find yourself without a buddy to play against.
Unfortunately it’s seemingly not possible to play against another player locally, at least on the Xbox Series X, which is a bit of a drag since that feels like a staple of casual racers. It’s at least fairly easy to get around that since Fortnite is free-to-play, so I’ve already installed it on every platform I own. I’m also impressed at how well its performance scales between the Nintendo Switch and PC, where I could compete against other players at roughly the same level of competence no matter which hardware I was using. I didn’t feel as bad when I partied up with a group of friends across platforms as I might playing Battle Royale, no matter which system I or they were playing on.
Aside from a few network issues on my provider’s end – which were present on every system I tested Rocket Racing on, over the course of an entire weekend – it’s a smooth and tight experience no matter how beefy your gaming machine. I’ve always been impressed by the wizardry behind Fortnite’s multiplayer systems, allowing over a hundred players to coexist in the same map at once during Battle Royale matches, regardless of hardware. The chaos and high-speed action of Rocket Racing makes me appreciate that aforementioned wizardry even more, seeing as how hard it must be to keep everyone on even footing with this much stuff happening in this tight of a space.
The main problem is that there’s just not much to Rocket Racing right now.
The main problem with Rocket Racing is that there’s just not much to it right now. Even though it has 26 maps, most of them rarely make it into circulation, which leaves the impression that there is significantly less stuff to see. Softening that blow, Fortnite still lets you scroll down a list and select one map to play at a time – and this is especially useful if you’re sick of the popular rotation – but its current way of facilitating that choice isn’t all that convenient. The amount of time needed to find a match slows down dramatically if you have to manually select a specific map from the list every time instead of opting for general matchmaking, and it’s not like you can pick and choose a bunch of maps to plot out your own custom playlist.
At least those maps – even the ones on repeat – are well-designed and enjoyable to replay. For instance, Bone Cavern features a series of tunnels filled with obstacles that encourage tricky use of flying and wall-riding, and it can be a lot of fun to watch other players miss their jump and crash head-first into a hazard. Moments like this are so hectic, I’m instantly reminded of games like Mario Party or Fall Guys.
Car customization, on the other hand, is a total non-starter. Each of these unremarkable toy cars handles the same, and there’s absolutely no variation in performance to speak of – even if you do unlock different visual car designs. It’s genuinely unclear how to unlock new vehicles and cosmetics anyway, other than by earning the scant few cars available on the higher tiers of the Fortnite Battle Pass. I’m assuming I’ll eventually need to pay V-Bucks for the privilege of owning different and better-looking rides, but until then, it’s boring to stare at the same cars over and over again.
I’m ultimately left conflicted on whether I enjoy Rocket Racing’s integration into Fortnite’s progression and Battle Pass system. On the one hand, it’s nice that the levels I’m earning in Rocket Racing are contributing to my level in Battle Royale and vice versa; especially since the cars I do eventually earn can be used as vehicle skins in the Battle Royale mode. But on the other hand, it feels like most of my leveling to earn those cars will be done in other modes once I get bored with Rocket Racing – and after that happens, it’ll just fade back into being a minigame that I ignore in favor of everything else in Fortnite’s expanding armada of stuff.
Board games for couples occupy a special niche in the wider canon of the best board games. As soon as you rise above that number, you create various design problems around balance and turn order that need to be considered. In a fighting game, for example, it allows two players to gang up on a third. Two-player board games thus have a particular purity of purpose that can make them particularly fun to play: there’s a reason so many classic board games like Chess and Go are designed for two. It also makes them a particular joy to share with that special someone, whoever they might be.
We have to start a list like this with a game designed specifically to tell the story of a couple in a relationship. However, it isn’t your relationship but one that you’ll create between a pair of fictitious characters and then go on to explore its nuances and ups and downs. Although there’s a certain amount of blue and pink in the visuals it’s also open to same-sex relationships, too. Your couple each get a brew of secret traits and destinies and then go on to play through a number of scenes, making choices based on traits that affect the outcome. As an experimental game, there is no winner here in the strict sense, but you’ll win by enjoying a fascinating journey through an imagined relationship instead.
Patchwork
Patchwork works because it’s a super simple synthesis of several clever concepts in one small package. Players buy geometric pieces using buttons to try and form a quilt with as few holes in it as possible. Each purchase also moves you forward on a time track, which intermittently earns you extra buttons or very useful single-square patches for your quilt, but the person last on the time track always takes the next turn. This lets you set up interesting plays like planning for double turns or trying to leapfrog your opponent to snatch a one-square patch. Gently addictive while it transfixes several parts of your brain at once, it’s no wonder it won a slew of awards and nominations.
The original Codenames was a rare breakout hit into the wider world of party games. Players laid out a grid of cards with words on them. Then one player per team had to give out single-word clues to try and link multiple words together in order to help their teammates identify which cards were coded to their side. Codenames: Duet is very similar but it’s been refined for two into a much sleeker cooperative game. Now you’re trying to find fifteen clues between you before a timer runs out. Because you both take turns giving clues, downtime while someone thinks of a clue to give is almost eliminated, bringing a fun slice of party game magic to the table with just the two of you.
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Unlike the other games on this list, The Adventures of Robin Hood is a narrative-driven title where you retell the legend of the famous outlaw across nine scenarios. But it brings all sorts of clever ideas to the formula, making it intriguing and engaging to play. There are no board spaces for starters: instead, you measure your progress across the map with a long base on your wooden playing piece, trying to stay in printed shadows and out of sight of guards. The board is like an advent calendar, with hundreds of numbered pieces you can lift out and flip over to create the feel of a living, dynamic world you encounter by looking up the numbers in the included book. Can you and your partner work together to save Nottingham from the clutches of the evil Sheriff before Guy of Gisborne hunts you down?
Hive
Played with delightful chunky plastic hexes, Hive is a game with an unfortunate tendency to make your skin crawl thanks to its insectoid subject matter. On the plus side, it also makes your brain crawl in all the best ways with its ever-escalating web of interlocking strategies. Each player has a Queen hex and you win by surrounding your opponent’s Queen with your pieces. There are four other types of insects, each with its own movement rules that you must leverage in pursuit of your goal. There are only eleven tiles on each side, which enter play one by one, and the Hive itself must always be a single conglomeration of tiles. That makes Hive easy to transport, set up and play, but the complex interaction of movement rules makes it devilishly hard to win.
Onitama
Onitama gets a lot of mileage out of a very simple idea. It’s played on a grid where each player starts with a master pawn and five students. Moving any of your pieces onto an opponent’s piece knocks it off the board and you win either by knocking out the enemy master or moving your own master to the opposite end of the board. The kicker is that the legal moves for your pieces depend on a random deal of cards: you have a choice of two each turn and the one you pick is discarded and refreshed from an extra card from the side of the board. This creates a fascinating and challenging interplay of cause and effect where you can see the likely path to plan ahead but the ever-changing roster of potential moves muddy the waters.
Five Tribes
You may have played the classic board game Mancala where you grab a handful of beads from a pit and pop one each in the following sequence of pits. Five Tribes translates this concept into a modern strategy game played on a grid of tiles. Each handful you pick up will consist of multiple color pieces and the final tile you drop one on determines what actions you take for that round. However, the changed board state then determines possible combinations for the next player to take, making each turn a mind-bending puzzle of balancing your own needs against your opponent’s opportunities. Add in an auction to determine the first player and you’ve got a modern classic. With two, Five Tribes lets you double your turns meaning there’s a whole other layer of using your first turn to set yourself up for a combo second turn.
The Fox in the Forest
If you’ve ever played a traditional trick-taking game like Whist you might be baffled that such a thing could work with two. Yet that’s what The Fox in the Forest achieves thanks to its three-suit deck in which even-numbered cards work like standard playing cards, but odd-numbered cards all have a special power. The 3-value Fox, for instance, lets you change the trump suit while the 9-value Witch is treated as always being a trump. Its other clever coup is the scoring system which rewards you for winning either the majority or the minority of tricks, making it very hard to eke out a lead unless you can time your wins to perfection. Fast, fun and innovative, The Fox in the Forest is an incredible answer to a seemingly impossible question.
7 Wonders: Duel
While the original 7 Wonders was a smash hit by itself, this two-player refinement is widely regarded as being even better. The core concept is the same: you’re drafting cards to make point-scoring sets representing aspects of an ancient civilization. Different types of cards represent different aspects such as military, technology or wonders of the world, and will give you bonuses and resources when added to your tableau. However, instead of the standard pick and pass drafting of the original game, 7 Wonders: Duel instead has players drafting from a pyramid of overlapping cards, most of which start face down and only become available when the cards atop them are taken. This adds a wonderful element of timing to the draft as you balance taking your best picks against giving more options to your opponent.
Santorini
As a Greek island, Santorini is famous for its dazzling white buildings, capped with blue domes. They’re replicated in plastic in this fun abstract, where players take the role of Greek deities battling to get one of two worshippers atop a tall tower. On your turn you can move one figure and then add a building level to an adjacent space: it’s that simple. But this simplicity belies a fascinating battle of trying to climb tiers while capping your opponent’s buildings with those beautiful blue roofs before they can ascend themselves. Great looking on the tabletop and with a slew of special god powers to keep things varied, abstract puzzling has rarely been so much fun.
Raptor
In this asymmetric game, one player takes the role of a team of scientists and the other a family of velociraptors. The scientists want to capture the young dinosaurs while their mother is trying to protect her babies. The action plays out on a modular map but what really makes the game shine is the simultaneous card play. Cards have a numeric value and a special power: the player with the lower cards gets the special action, while the player with the higher card gets the value difference in board actions. This adds a whole new layer of doublethink to the usual bluffing and guesswork that’s the main draw of games with simultaneous hidden card play.
Schotten Totten
A classic from back in 1999, Schotten Totten still holds up well today. Its central idea is that you’re battling across nine stones with each player trying to create Poker-style three-card combos on their own side, one card at a time. This creates the most delicious tension as your opponent wonders what meld you’re aiming for, and you worry whether you’ll draw the right cards to complete it. Just like Poker itself, there’s plenty of strategy in playing the probabilities, plus there’s an extra deck of special power tactics cards to spice things up. And if that wasn’t enough for you, you can also use the cards with their amusing cartoon art to play a completely different game called Lost Cities.
Matt Thrower is a freelance with years of experience reviewing and writing about board games.
The statements come after fans began to speculate that some of the art teased for the 2024 Player’s Handbook planned for next year relied on AI, due to some believing that an image of a dwarf was missing one of his arms.
This image, combined with layoffs at Wizards earlier this year which included some artists and a job listing for a “touch up artist,” led some to speculate the company had plans to replace some of their artists with AI tools.
Wizards responded to the questions about the Player’s Handbook art on X yesterday, writing, “We confirmed with the artist that no generative AI was used, which is consisteny with our artist guidelines restricting it.
Then today, it released a full statement, which reads:
For 30 years, Magic: The Gathering has been built on the innovation, ingenuity, and hard work of talented people who sculpt a beautiful, creative game. That isn’t changing. Our internal guidelines remain the same with regard to artificial intelligence tools: We require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the Magic TCG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final Magic products. We work with some of the most talented artists and creatives in the world, and we believe those people are what makes Magic great.
Artists familiar with the the company also chimed in on social media to vouch for Wizards of the Coast as well.
I know we all want to see corporations burn, but WotC has been one of the few who were firmly anti AI from the start and nothing but supporting to artists. I have no idea where the ‘Hasbro fired mostly artists’ narrative is even coming from. 1/2 https://t.co/Z7IMJ5SvLV
As someone who is- A) staunchly anti ai B) not trusting of corps C) had the top of his aragon illustration extended upward by a dedicated in house toucher-upper who would have said duties
– I know this is a nothing burger. Focus your efforts to combat ai elsewhere. pic.twitter.com/xomdMxkWCO
Other artists sought to clarify that the existence of touch up artists does not imply a move to AI-generated art, clarifying that touching up art internally after its been commissioned is a common practice:
In gaming, almost all outsourced art is touched up internally, either for quality/style or to repurpose it for marketing. WotC hiring a “touch up artist” does not mean they’re turning to AI…
Stop retweeting conspiracies from people who don’t even work in game art.
Wizards of the Coast plans to release the updated 2024 Player’s Handbook, alongside the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual next year, which IGN had a chance to take an early look at when we visited their headquarters earlier this year.
Interesting, isn’t it, that the first new Silent Hill project for a decade isn’t even set in Silent Hill. More interestingly still, it’s not even a game – at least, not in the traditional sense. It’s a curious decision, and kind of gutsy, too, given the clamor for the neglected horror series. There are loads of things we recognize from that spooky little resort town – there’s the signature fog, monsters, a weird cult, and a whole cast of people with haunted pasts – but if you were hoping that Silent Hill: Ascension was ringing in the next generation of great Silent Hill adventures, you may have a little longer to wait.
To be fair, the animated interactive series – available via a mobile app, a website, and as a non-interactive series on streaming services like Sony Pictures Core – has just wrapped up for the holidays, but there are still several months to go, so we’ve yet to discover its final twists. We don’t yet know if the titular town is going to make an appearance, or how – or even if – the seemingly unconnected storylines will converge.
We don’t know much at all, really, for although Ascension has been broadcast almost daily since its launch on Halloween 2023 (for a month, new episodes ran seven days a week; it now runs Monday through Friday), the clips have been astonishingly brief, usually no more than a minute or two in length. In totality, that gives us around 30 minutes of footage each week, all of which can be viewed in daily or weekly installments. It’s a great format if you like bite-sized media; it’s not so hot if you’d prefer to spend time getting to know the characters… or perhaps have poor short-term memory.
The story kicks off as two towns thousands of miles apart experience a shared fate: a death at the hands of something otherworldly. For one town, where humanoid shapes shuffle in the shadows of the local farm, it’s a mystery; for the other, it’s a consequence of a religious ritual gone wrong. For both, the death kicks off a chain of spooky happenings.
The way it’s delivered in seconds-long snippets makes it a little disjointed and difficult to follow.
Although many of the themes – revenge, guilt, a religious cult that may or may not be evil – will feel familiar to Silent Hill fans, with so much of Ascension still to run, it’s hard to give a definitive opinion on the story, not least because the way it’s delivered in seconds-long snippets makes it a little disjointed and difficult to follow. (I prefer the weekly recaps to the daily broadcasts because it’s a little easier to track the plot.) The focus is on the lives of five key characters: Toby, Eric, Rachel, Karl, and Astrid. The last two are a Norwegian father-and-daughter duo introduced just as the family’s delightful matriarch meets an untimely end. The first three dwell in the all-American town of Hope Junction, where they’re the town drunk, launderette proprietor, and religious acolyte, respectively.
Astrid is cold, explosive, and perpetually on a knife’s edge. Her father’s a milder, kinder soul, but does things that seem very much out of step with the man we thought he was. Rachel, too, is a little all over the place, endlessly staggering from serenity to rage and back again, sometimes within a single scene. It’s not that I can’t accept that characters can change, but when you spend just a few minutes with them each week, it’s hard to appreciate why they’re changing. Without understanding who they really are, nothing these folks do really makes sense, which sometimes means little of the story makes sense, either.
It’s hard to know who I’m supposed to be rooting for.
Even now, seven weeks on, I don’t know how I feel about them. The time we’ve spent together is so fleeting, and understanding of their motivations so shallow, it’s hard to know who I’m supposed to be rooting for… which is a problem, given that rooting for people sits at the very heart of Ascension’s appeal. After all, it’s up to us to decide on the fate of the main characters.
So far, Silent Hill: Ascension is a curious choose-your-own-adventure story. We’ve been given a set of characters, and it’s up to the audience to decide what happens to them by voting on preferred outcomes and whether or not we want them to follow the path to “redemption, suffering, or damnation”. Sometimes, we can affect very small, inconsequential events. Sometimes, these decisions can mean life or death. As I’ve been continually reminded as the weeks tick past, it’s clear that my choices are often at odds with the rest of the audience, and sometimes what I think is the “best” decision inexplicably leads the character into “damnation” – say, destroying a bloody glove, in defiance of 77 percent of the votes – making me second-guess myself.
The studio responsible for Ascension, Genvid, insists it has no idea which characters will survive because there are thousands of incremental choices that can affect how the story progresses, which is possibly why Toby, Eric, Rachel, Karl, and Astrid lurch from one extreme reaction to the next. At one point, Karl is desperately helping Astrid locate a missing family member; a couple of scenes later, he’s calling the authorities to get her committed. And I have no idea how we got from point A to point B.
Even the acting and voice work feel wonky at times; the animation and motion-capture work can feel a little clumsy, too. Sometimes, characters are utterly dismissive of the people and world around them. Other times, they overreact at the slightest provocation. No one seems to be talking about the creatures they’ve seen, or why their world has suddenly turned upside down. Children are missing, but their mothers aren’t telling anyone else about the disembodied voices calling out of the forest, or reporting that they heard their missing offspring on the phone. And once you start noticing the characters’ lack of consistency, it’s hard to unsee it.
Once you start noticing the characters’ lack of consistency, it’s hard to unsee it.
Even though Silent Hill: Ascension isn’t a game per se (the debate over what is and isn’t will never end, but for the sake of brevity, let’s call this interactive fiction), it has a battle pass – because of course it does – and, just to confuse us a little more, it has games, too. It’s through these that you can earn two types of currency: standard XP, which levels up said pass to unlock “rewards” and influencer points (IP) which you use to vote for key plot decisions or enter a lottery to have your weird-looking avatar get an in-game cameo and be enshrined in Silent Hill canon forever. The cameos don’t ever feel anything other than forced and wildly out of place.
This small array of casual puzzle games are Ascension’s least offensive aspect. They’re grouped into two categories: Arcane, which you play to unlock currency for yourself, and Mindfulness, through which the audience’s efforts are combined to make an average score that then affects individual characters’ Hope. It’s this Hope that helps keep characters alive when they star in Endure, the interactive quick-time event sequence included at the end of each episode. Contributors will get IP as a thank-you for their participation, which is pretty galling for those of us in Europe; there’s no way to replay this sequence at a later date, which means European players will be continually disadvantaged and earn less IP… unless they want to stay up past 2 a.m. five nights a week.
Trouble is, everything designed to make Ascension unique is what ultimately weighs it down. The ability to vote and change outcomes is a novel one, but the multiple choices make the story feel choppy and unstable. I have the $20 battle pass and max out the amount of XP/IP I can earn each day, and right now, I have 39.4K saved up. There’s a leaderboard that monitors the highest-spending voters of each choice, though, and the leaders of the two options deciding how Rachel will exploit Xavier’s absence have spent 64.7K and 55.3K, respectively. No one in the Top 5 of the leaderboard has spent less than 25K. So what’s the point of throwing in one or two hundred of my points if someone can trump my miserable contribution thousands of times over? For it to feel meaningful, player votes should be equal and democratic, not always slanted in favor of those prepared to pay for more power. It makes the vote feel vastly inequitable.
Avatar made a big splash when it hit screens in late 2009, and Ubisoft Massive is aiming to continue the momentum of its sequel, The Way of Water, with the new open-world action-adventure game Frontiers of Pandora. A clear showcase for both PC hardware and Ubisoft’s own Snowdrop engine, the game is already proving to be both a visual treat and rather demanding to run, so let’s open Pandora’s box and see what happens.
A Frosty Reception
Ubisoft Massive’s Snowdrop Engine was a big hit back in 2013 with its impressive E3 demo for The Division. Although that game never quite hit those heights, it was a technical pioneer on the eighth-gen consoles and PC, offering full time of day, dynamic precomputed irradiance, dynamic weather, dense volumetrics, complex AI, and online integration.
Snowdrop has evolved over the years, and although many of those core elements have remained, the team has embraced the current generation with new features as well. The current big-ticket item is ray tracing, which is now included on the toolkit. Supporting ray-traced global illumination and reflections is a core pillar for the game’s visual requirements, delivering bounce lighting with diffuse color, which is critical to the art aesthetic of the Avatar movies and games.
The movement of flora and fauna combined with the stylized lighting, fog volumes, ray-traced global illumination, and sheer micro density of the world is staggeringly impressive.
The solution enables light to react inside caves, across flowing flora fields, and into dense wooded overgrowth, giving the game a striking and organic look. This is backed up by the game’s shifting time and weather patterns, which rely on volumetrics. Be they clouds, lights, or fog, it adds depth and solidity to the world of Pandora. Some sections can see you wading through heavy fog during battle, or flying high through the clouds as the stratospheric water volumes engulf your steed, not unlike Horizon Forbidden West.
This is where my first critique arises from a visual perspective: the movement of flora and fauna combined with the stylized lighting, fog volumes, ray-traced global illumination, and sheer micro density of the world is staggeringly impressive. Even on medium settings, the recreation of the movie’s landscape with relatively minimal level-of-detail pop-in is worthy of much praise.
The issue I have is with the character rendering, as materials and animation are not of the same quality, and it can be jarring when you battle or talk to characters in the game. This is impacted by the stop/start nature of the real-time cinematics, as they often commence with a fade to black. I enjoy the fact that they almost always remain in first person, but the shadows, physically-based rendering quality on skin and hair, and lack of expressive emotion can be mixed depending on the scene or character. Humans fare worse – even if they are not seen often, it still stands out. But the Na’vi can also be of a mixed motion and quality level, and compounded by the first-person view and spline-based locomotion during these sequences, they can lose some of the cinematic impact that the game is aspiring for.
Nothing here is terrible, and it often flows and feels like a Far Cry game, specifically Far Cry Primal, even if those were built within the Dunia Engine. Ultimately you spend much of your time alone enjoying the gorgeous, dense, and above all dynamic world that can be broken down, traversed, and flown above freely. I just hoped that the mix of story and gameplay would be far more symbiotic than it is, with many NPC simply repeating the same cycle of animations and actions with little regard for ongoing crises. Memory demands are high – 8GB and even 10GB cards can struggle with low mip maps, but even on my 16GB RX 6800 some of the textures and materials were low fidelity and definition, which added to some weaker moments during play.
You are NA’VI going to run this.
The PC version offers excellent scalability with a preset of Low through Ultra and a myriad of options within to tweak further. Ray-traced reflections and global illumination are integral, as even on consoles these are a core element, including on the Series S. Scaling options are paramount if you want 60fps levels of performance, as I had difficulty achieving a locked 60fps on an RTX 3080 and Ryzen 7 5800X3D with DLSS enabled. Using my RX 6800 and Ryzen 5 5600X at 4K, dropping from Ultra to High nets you a 41% performance increase. Knocking down to Medium delivers a further 12% on that, with Low offering a small but possibly meaningful 6% increase over that.
Even on my 16GB RX 6800 some of the textures and materials were low fidelity and definition.
Image quality has three options: the core TAA of the engine, Nvidia’s DLSS if you have an Nvidia GPU, and AMD’s wider supported FSR3. These are vital to deliver good performance, and by enabling 4K Balanced at the same High settings at 4K, we gain superior performance and image quality over Low, giving us approximately a 56% increase on that previous 31fps reading, which is still insufficient for a locked 60fps, but enough for a smooth 30 or 40fps. As a minimum the medium preset is as low as I recommend – lower than that and the impact to visual quality is not worth the performance gains.
Between DLSS and FSR, the cost for the two solutions is comparable on the same hardware, which is true on both my RTX 2070 and RTX 3080. The AMD solution is cross-vendor, so even if you have an older card, FSR3 is the best option for all. This was a surprise for me, as this is the first game I have tested where FSR3 has a slightly better overall image quality than DLSS. This is the latest version of FSR3 and the improvements are obvious once you enable it compared to prior FSR versions This is largely down to the increased ghosting on high contrast pixels that DLSS suffers compared to FSR3, but also more pixel jittering on average than FSR. It is not overwhelming and certainly not something I would say stands out everywhere, but normally the foliage and instability of FSR is worse than the DLSS option.
Even if you have an older card, FSR3 is the best option for all.
One final choice is the use of frame interpolation that both offer, which can double performance over the base target. Both disable V-sync by default so a reliance on VRR or G-sync is required. That said, the solution requires the game to render thre frames minimum ahead of display, e.g. Frames 1 and 3 are rendered before Frame 2, as this frame is generated from the interpolated delta between them. As such, a minimum or close to 16ms frame-time is required due to frame persistence and the increased input latency it adds. With a mouse and keyboard this is a big problem, as it can present some visual artifacts in cases such as when underwater or in fast pixel movement. Therefore, for slow-moving camera presentation, as I show in the video, it is an excellent solution to improve fluidity. But in general gameplay the benefits it offers can be mixed. I wouldn’t recommend using it if you’re using mouse and keyboard, but for controller players it may be worth it, so long as you can hit 60fps without it.
Recommended Settings
In this section I’ll be covering how to get the best balance of performance and visual quality on three hardware configurations. Starting with the medium spec of my RTX 2070 paired with 32GB of DDR4 RAM, a fast SSD, and a Ryzen 7 2700 8c/16t CPU @3.8Ghz, a locked 60fps is not really an option, as the visual and resolution cutbacks impact the games quality heavily. Which means for this specification and below I recommend a 30fps or 40fps cap if you have a 120Hz capable screen, with a mix of Medium and a few High settings (See Medium PC Spec Optimised table) at a 1440p output via FSR3 Balanced. This renders approximately 1488×837 base resolution with a bias set to enable up to 1080p scaling factor. This achieves a consistent 30 to 40 fps readout across dense forests, real time cutscenes, and sky-high escapades. This provides most of the visual quality and the most stable and consistent performance rate on this hardware spec.
For the high-end spec, I’m using an RX 6800 to represent AMD and an RTX 3080 for Nvidia, both paired with 32GB of fast DDR4 RAM with SSDs. At this level, my recommended settings for a smooth 60fps target are a slight mix of Medium and High (See High PC Spec Optimised Table), with more weight to High on lighting, density and shadows which can provide more than 17% increase over High settings with negligible visual impact. The 5600X CPU has a lower view range than my 5800X3D CPU, which helps reduce pop-in. My RX 6800 targets an 1800p FSR3 Performance output with a bias to a ceiling of approx 1440p base resolution.
Whilst my RTX 3080 can do the same at 4K Balanced (1271p base), again with a bias to approx 1620p ceiling. This can still have dips below 60 in certain segments, such as streaming, dense foliage and larger explosions, which was true of all my tested machines, but in general play it feels very smooth, and above all solid on a mouse or controller input, which is vital for a first person shooter.
Beyond these GPU levels I would recommend scaling resolution to the FSR or DLSS 4K Ultra Quality without touching my recommended settings. There’s also a hidden “Unobtanium” setting that can be enabled from the command options within the Ubisoft launcher. This cranks everything to the absolute maximum, and is really only meant to be a test for future hardware, so you shouldn’t turn it on. The setting offers far higher ray counts, pixel sampling, increased shadow cascade, LoD and is so demanding that to hit 4K 60fps natively would require a GPU beyond anything available today. Still, I am very happy the team included this setting as a future-proof option, and I am sure it may become a future game to test GPU scaling when the next generation of GPUs comes around.
There’s also a hidden “Unobtanium” setting that can be enabled from the command options within the Ubisoft launcher.
Bugs In The Forest
Although not the worst we have seen this year I did find many consistent bugs throughout my play, even after several launch patches dropped. Objects would often pop in and out of existence, flickering and dithered levels of detail, and light maps and even NPCs could appear and disappear instantly. The game crashed to the desktop a few times on my RTX 2070 as well, which may have been memory related, but the error trap was non-operational and was simply a hung application. Worse were the gameplay issues that came up: characters would face the wrong way during dialogue, and physics could flick and jump around at times. AI would lock into poses or simply warp around during battles into animation sets with little to no blending, and I had a few quest-breaking sections. One of the worst involved connecting to your beast – if you take too long. you can never mount it and you get flung to your death and fall through the map. In the end I had to rush this section as it appears to time out on the fade to black cutscene trigger. Although these issues were not frequent, I encountered them enough that it was worth noting.
Summary
The world and audio quality is excellent: landscape creation, art, and lighting are certainly worthy of praise, as is the sound mix and audio propagation that likely utilizes ray tracing to allow sounds to occlude, reverb, originate, and generally bounce around you – a real highlight with the correct sound set-up. However, many aspects of the visual and presentation package do not align with that quality. Cutscenes are rarely more than a face-to-face chat, and big epic action sequences have no impact to them and can look incomplete. But worst of all, the models, materials, and animation are mixed with some last-generation levels as opposed to the incredibly lush and full world of Pandora you are thrust within. It crossed my mind often while playing that it all looks and plays very much like a Far Cry game in the Avatar universe, and I could never shake the feeling that was its original pitch. Even when compared to those games it looks mostly like an improved version of the Dunia engine, rather than the Snowdrop cogs that turn underneath this brand-new world.
The ninth generation of Pokemon has been a roller coaster ride, to say the least. With the introduction of a fully open world and non-linear objectives, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet finally made the freedom of the monster-filled adventures I dreamed of as a child a playable reality. But that reality was a technical disaster, turning what should have been a standing ovation for the series into a smattering of lukewarm golf claps. Multiple post-launch updates and its first DLC did nothing to fix this, and The Teal Mask expansion specifically was all around a disappointment of its own. So here we are: The Indigo Disk. The last DLC, and presumably the final significant word (epilogue aside) on Pokemon’s ambitious and chaotic ninth generation. Is it an improvement? Yes, but not entirely. While The Indigo Disk’s new area, battles, quests, and challenges are an excellent coda to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet in almost every way, it’s all still being bogged down by the numerous problems that have become synonymous with Pokemon’s first true foray into the open world.
The Indigo Disk takes place at Blueberry Academy, a human-made island off the coast of Pokemon Black and White’s Unova region where your character becomes an exchange student. It continues the story of siblings Kieran and Carmine that started in The Teal Mask DLC earlier this year, with The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk serving as two halves of a whole story: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero. I won’t spoil more, but I came away with mixed feelings on The Indigo Disk’s campaign, especially in light of how excellent Scarlet and Violet’s base story was. Returning antihero Kieran’s plot especially felt awkward and contrived, and the whole story being split between the two DLC halves and two disparate locations with almost entirely separate casts of supporting characters didn’t help. It was strange too that the titular “Hidden Treasure of Area Zero” was tacked onto the end of Indigo Disk’s campaign, like someone realized last minute what the title was and scrambled to make it work.
But despite being wrapped in a flimsy story, The Indigo Disk is a pretty darn fun DLC. Its campaign is at its best when it once again turns you loose upon the open world, letting you defeat a series of interesting and diverse opponents in any order you please. This is the freedom that I loved in Scarlet and Violet, and which was mysteriously missing in The Teal Mask. What’s more, The Indigo Disk is challenging in a good way – most of the battles in the DLC are double battles, and your opponents’ teams are strategically composed, often packing competitive trappings like held items, complimentary movesets, and interesting Tera types. There’s even one required set of battles that forces you to train up a new team of Pokemon specifically caught in the DLC. Seasoned Pokemon players with competitive or raid-ready teams likely still won’t have a problem in The Indigo Disk, but if you’re trying to roll through with a haphazard collection of fellas that got you through the main story, you might need to rethink your plans.
The Indigo Disk is challenging in a good way
Most of my time in The Indigo Disk was spent in the Terarium (yes, it’s spelled that way), a massive, self-contained Safari Zone of sorts divided into four different biomes all stuffed with new (to Scarlet and Violet) Pokemon. After being fairly lukewarm on Scarlet and Violet’s world design, I actually thought the Terarium was a marked improvement: it has more diverse landmarks condensed into a smaller space, which makes it a lot more interesting to explore. Instead of finding the same Pokemon all over each zone, many of them are localized to very specific areas: there’s one beach where Galarian Slowpoke all hang out and take naps, for instance, and a Pride Rock-themed outcropping appropriately covered in Litleo. There’s a cool underground labyrinth where Mudkips hide, and a deep cave full of lightning-charged stones and electric spiders if you dive far enough. I loved stumbling across all these little pockets of Pokemon, and I’m still finding surprising new corners of the Terarium as I work to complete my Blueberry Pokedex.
It does help to be rewarded for that exploration, and most of those rewards appear after you’ve finished The Indigo Disk’s story, via a new feature called Blueberry Quests, or BBQs. These are short, simple tasks that you can complete in the Terarium, such as “Catch a Pokemon” or “Photograph a Pokemon in the Polar Biome.” In return you’ll get Blueberry Points, or BP, which can then be spent on all kinds of prizes. Some of these are cosmetic, such as the ability to change up how your character throws a PokeBall, or to decorate a club room in Blueberry Academy. But the most interesting (and expensive) options unlock even more new Pokemon for the Terarium, or let you invite powerful trainers such as Scarlet and Violet’s Gym Leaders and Elite Four to Blueberry Academy for rematches and, delightfully, new story conversations for fan favorite characters like Rika and Larry. There are tons of interesting things to spend BP on, including a bonus final boss battle – enough to keep me busy for quite a while to come. I’ve dumped over 15 hours into this DLC already and I’m still nowhere close to running out of stuff to unlock.
Part of that is because gathering BP by yourself is pretty slow, but The Indigo Disk eases that pain by finally, finally giving a purpose to Scarlet and Violet’s co-op feature. You’ve always been able to adventure through Paldea with up to four players simultaneously, but there wasn’t really any advantage to doing this outside of cooperative sandwich making. But in the Terarium, all players can contribute to and receive BP from one another’s BBQs, and even unlock special group quests for bigger payouts. I had a great time running around the Terarium with a friend, strategizing over voice chat about how we’d divvy up some of the harder BBQs, like completing a raid or making a specific sandwich. I never thought I’d be able to heartily recommend Scarlet and Violet’s co-op after my original review, but here we are.
I loved almost everything about The Indigo Disk… as a DLC, at least.
I loved almost everything about The Indigo Disk… as a DLC, at least. Its biggest problem stems directly from the fact that it is still an add-on for a game that was fundamentally pretty messy to begin with, and that messiness hasn’t gone away. Yup, I’m talking about technical issues. Again. In fact, how about we let a paragraph from my original review of Scarlet and Violet in November of last year sum up the experience of playing The Indigo Disk:
And if that’s not enough, here’s another still-relevant paragraph about the problems with raiding from my review of The Teal Mask DLC earlier this year:
Literally all of that is still true in The Indigo Disk, somehow. There’s a big chunk of the Savannah biome in the Terarium with mud puddles that inexplicably causes heinous stuttering whenever you get too close. Multiple times, my game froze for several whole seconds and made me think it was about to crash. Another problem lies in the newly-added ability to fly freely around anywhere you want, which does an exemplary job of showing off how haphazardly taped together everything is as entire landmarks flash wildly in and out of existence. And as before, co-op mode or online play makes everything run about 10% worse. I have tried time and time again to ignore all these issues while playing and just enjoy Pokemon. But every single time, some stupid, obvious bug yanks me out of it, like my Tinkaton completely wrecking in-battle camera angles, or the brightness randomly turning all the way up while I’m just trying to make a sandwich. It’s inexcusable.
