Category: IGN

Shambling out of the seventh-generation graveyard for its second remaster, Capcom at least deserves credit for bringing Dead Rising itself in line with accepted zombie lore. That is, it too is now officially a stubborn corpse that refuses to stay dead. However, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster earns credit for more than just that. Capcom has injected a series of smart tweaks to the gameplay that make surviving a zombie-infested mall less frustrating than it was 20 years ago, but it does so while still preserving the feel of the original’s challenging, time-limited experience. Combined with a fresh visual overhaul, the result is easily the best way to play what’s still the best Dead Rising game – even if the occasionally creaky combat is certainly showing its age through a modern lens.

Remasters and remakes of already strong video games can be a little hard to appraise. They can be fantastic yet inescapably inessential, like The Last of Us Part 1 – a remake of an existing, excellent remaster that was already hard to fault on a console just a single generation old. Alternatively, they can be literally nothing more than a small resolution bump, like the 2019 remaster of 2009’s Ghostbusters: The Video Game. I adore Ghostbusters but, aside from saving it from being marooned on PS3 on Sony’s side of the fence, what did re-publishing it as a bespoke product achieve that the ‘Enhanced’ 4K updates delivered to dozens of Xbox 360 games for free did not?

In fairness, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster makes a far clearer case for itself, because it isn’t just slightly better looking. Crucially, it’s also a better game to play.

Kill ’em Mall

For clarity, this is not a ground-up do-over in the same spirit as its undead Capcom cousins, though it is driven by the same RE Engine that powers all recent Resident Evil remakes. Cutscenes and conversations are all running on the same rigging, and it does largely feel like the 2006 classic is chugging away under the glossy surface most of the time.

It is a vast visual improvement, but that’s hardly a shocking revelation considering the 18-year-old source material. The increase in fidelity boosts the facial animations to a level that was virtually non-existent before. I don’t really have a position on Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster’s older and wearier Frank West. More dad bod, less heartthrob; it makes no meaningful difference to me. I am jealous of his shoulders, though, which seem slightly more immense this time around. Seriously, the bloke is built like a 4:3 man in a world of widescreen.

At any rate, it’s the world of Willamette Parkview Mall that remains the real star here. Exploring the detailed stores, each with their distinct themes and ranges of weaponisable products, was deeply nostalgic – doubly so considering how much I desperately miss CD and DVD shops, and Willamette has four of ’em.

It’s not without defects, though. Pop-in is particularly prevalent in the outdoor Leisure Park area, which is disappointing. There are also occasional textures that are consistently late to sharpen up, and some literal signs of AI-upscaled nonsense (on a door plaque that’s overtly closed in our faces during an early cutscene, no less) do make me wonder about how many human eyeballs passed over these assets on their way into the finished product.

However, the more important tweaks in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster concern how it feels rather than how it looks. While the original control scheme is still included, I warmed to the new controls instantly. I certainly couldn’t go back now.

The ability to move while aiming is a sizeable shift. Even though it makes cheesing some of the dopier bosses a lot easier, it’s a big part of what makes the new controls feel far less clunky. Special moves have been shifted to button presses rather than requiring expert manipulation of the right stick. On the flip side, answering radio calls and issuing commands to the survivors you have in tow has been moved to analogue stick presses, meaning we can continue moving in any direction without being interrupted. I found I could jog, carve a path through zombies, and bark commands at the moronic mallrats I’d mustered together without skipping a beat. It also helps that survivors are noticeably smarter than they were in the original. They’re not completely immune from pathfinding problems, and things begin to look quite janky when herding large groups, but it’s a tidy improvement overall.

Weapon durability is now illustrated, and navigation is also improved markedly. The original’s nebulous arrow has been replaced with a working compass and distance indicators, which help distinguish when objective locations are on different floors and make it clearer when fresh objectives are close by. It makes it a lot easier to see whether a newly noticed survivor is worth diverting for on, say, your current trip back to the security room. Combined with the new auto-save mechanic, it’s a real timesaver. I’ve picked up far larger groups of survivors in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster than I ever dared to back in 2006.

The constant loading times between areas are admittedly a bit draining in 2024, but the auto-saves that trigger upon passing between them are a game changer. Yes, it’s true a certain degree of frustration is part of the original Dead Rising’s DNA. It asked players to make difficult and timely decisions, settle on sometimes-unfortunate compromises, and improvise when things went wrong. That said, I think the new auto-save system is a fair and modern middle ground. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is easier because of it, but it does remain a rigidly time-sensitive experience that demands a considerable amount of plate spinning. If you do want to schlep all the way back from a save point as a matter of principle, there are now 20 save slots and you’re certainly free to play it that way. Personally, I’m okay with the challenge without the tedium.

Wrecking Mall

In contrast, there are some changes that don’t work, including portions of the re-recorded voice acting. It’s good that all the survivor and radio dialogue is fully voiced now (although there are times where the survivor chatter sounds like a completely different person than you initially spoke to). However, some of the replacement performances for central characters are a little more stilted, which only tends to highlight the awkwardness of the script’s clumsiest lines.

Speaking of the script, there are also some slightly baffling changes in that regard, too – but none more so than the scrubbing of Cliff’s history as a Vietnam War veteran. To refresh, Cliff is the “psychopath” found in Crislip’s Home Saloon who’s suffered a complete break from reality; the horrors of the zombie outbreak have sent him directly back to the war. If there was a genuine concern here regarding trivialising PTSD amongst combat veterans, I’d get it, but Cliff is still overtly a military man. It just comes across like someone didn’t want Cliff to call Frank a “filthy communist.” That’s pretty inane censorship in a game that saw fit to leave, say, its hugely horny hostage-taking cop otherwise intact.

Of course, it’s hardly game breaking, but it’s a shame something so small has been prioritised over things that would’ve made Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster genuinely better. For instance, the prisoner psychopaths in the Humvee still respawn after a few hours. That always felt like a mistake (or, at a minimum, a cheap trick to pull on players) and it doesn’t make any sense. No other unique psychopaths respawn like that.

The elevator to the roof is eventually always still full of zombies. That was dumb then, and it’s still dumb. Having it filled with zombies occasionally would be a shock. As it is, it’s just tiresome, especially when all you need to do is dart in and spam interact to trigger the elevator anyway. As long as your survivors were close enough to the lift to begin with, you’ll all still appear safe on the empty roof regardless of how many zombies were in the lift. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster could’ve massaged that.

Then again, maybe it couldn’t have. Maybe some of that jank is too deeply baked into the original gameplay to be removed without breaking something else. I also guess it isn’t the only stuff that comes across as a little shonky by contemporary standards. We are talking about a game where you need to shoot a woman in the face with a sniper rifle until she calms down, or fill a man’s body with bullets until he runs away healthy, leaving your ally totally crippled with the one shot in the entire shootout that seemed to matter. Hey, it’s old. It’s how we used to do things.

It’s official: Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are taking legal action against Palworld’s developer, Pocketpair.

The companies filed a lawsuit against the developer today, September 18, seeking “an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights.”

We posted the News Release “Filing Lawsuit for Infringement of Patent Rights against Pocketpair, Inc.”https://t.co/76ttENZXtv

— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報・IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) September 18, 2024

“Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself, to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years,” Nintendo’s statement reads.

The filing is absolutely massive news and follows months of speculation that Nintendo would take legal action over the indie survival game that’s been referred to as “Pokémon with guns.” Nintendo previously released a statement about Palworld in January, vowing that intended “to investigate and take appropriate measures” against any potentially infringing content. A modder also claimed that “Nintendo has come for me” after posting a clip with Pokémon’s Ash Ketchum in Palworld.

But six months later, in June, Pocketpair insisted that Nintendo had yet to make a complaint in response to the “Pokémon rip-off” claims. “Nintendo and the Pokémon Company didn’t say anything to us,” Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe told Game File at the time. “Of course I love Pokémon and respect it. I grew up with it, in my generation.”

On Tuesday, Electronic Arts (EA) held its annual Investor Day — a three-hour presentation intended for its investors to learn more about the company’s direction and promises to make them money in the coming year. But you’d be forgiven if you thought this was some sort of AI tech conference given how effusively the technology was brought up and touted as a key component of EA’s future.

While we’ve known for a while that EA and a number of other gaming companies are experimenting with and investing heavily in AI, it was nonetheless a bit overwhelming just how often AI came up throughout the entire presentation. It was mentioned it just about every single segment in some capacity, had its own dedicated segment near the end, and was described during CEO Andrew Wilson’s introductory speech as “the very core of our business” — a rather shocking new mission statement for a company that ostensibly makes and publishes video games.

We watched the entirety of the three-hour Investor Day presentation, and did our best to round up all the AI “highlights” in an effort to paint a picture of what, exactly, EA is doing with AI and what we can expect to see in the coming years if its investments and interest in the tech pan out.

Core of the Business

The first mention of AI in the presentation took place right at the top, in Andrew Wilson’s opening speech. In addition to referring to AI as “the very core of our business” and “not merely a buzzword,” he announced that EA apparently has over 100 active “novel AI projects” in the works right now, ranging from the practical to the very experimental. Wilson divvied these up into three categories: efficiency, expansion, and transformation.

Amazon is currently offering a Baseus 10,000mAh USB Type-C power bank with 20W USB Power Delivery for a mere $10.44 after you clip a 20% off coupon and apply 25% off code “HM8WNMGD“. That’s a great price for a 10K power bank that’s equipped with a USB Type-C output with up to 20W of Power Delivery. It’s an excellent battery backup for your Nintendo Switch since it can charge the console at its maximum rate of 18W.

Baseus 10,000mAh 20W Power Bank for Just Over $10

The 10,000mAH power bank is the perfect compromise between battery capacity and size, especially if you’re looking for a battery backup for something as small as the Nintendo Switch. This Baseus model measures 6″ long and 2.7″ wide, about the same size as an iPhone 14 Pro, and only 0.7″ thin. It weighs in at about 9 ounces. The 10,000mAh capacity is no slouch either. Factoring in charging inefficiencies, you should still expect this power bank to charge a Switch about 1.5 times. If we go by Nintendo’s official claim of 4.5-9 hours from the battery, you’re essentially extending that to 11-22 hours.

There are three ports for versatility: a USB Type-C port, USB Type-A port, and Micro USB port. The USB Type-C port is both output and input, which means you can charge the power bank OR charge your devices from that same port. This is the port you want to use to get the 20W charging rate. Since the Nintendo Switch can charge at a cap of 18W, the Type-C port will max out the Switch’s charging speed.

The Baseus power bank is UL certified and comes with built-in safety protections you’d expect from a decent quality power bank. It also has an LED battery indicator that you can check with a press of a button. Although not as well known as Anker, Baseus is still a popular brand on Amazon and has plenty of positive reviews. I have a Baseus power bank myself and it hasn’t given me any problems.

The Baseus Power Bank is TSA-Approved

Spare lithium ion and lithium metal batteries, including power banks and cell phone battery charging cases, must be carried in carry-on baggage only. Power banks must be under either 27,000mAh or 100Whr in capacity. This Baseus power bank’s 10,000mAh battery capacity is well below TSA’s 27,000mAh limit, so it can be brought onto airplanes without worry. This power bank is small and discreet enough that it’s hard to imagine TSA even noticing the power bank in the first place.

Looking for more alternatives? Check out the best power banks of 2024.

Woot! (which is owned by Amazon) is offering the best deal on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Right now you can get a 3 month code for only $36.49. Earlier this year, Microsoft raised the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to $19.99 per month, so now you’re saving 40% off a 3 month membership. Note that you can purchase multiple codes and apply them to your account, up to a maximum of 36 months. If you’re an Xbox gamer, this is a great way to save a lot of money in the long run since you won’t have to buy new release games individually to play them.

Note: There is a new coupon “ULTIMATE” that takes $3 off one order, dropping the 3 month code price down to $33.49. If you purchase multiple codes, this coupon will only work on one code. The rest of the 3 month codes will be $36.49 each.

3 Months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $33.49

Use code: ULTIMATE

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gives you access to a library of hundreds of Xbox games, including day one releases. You can play them for the entirety of your membership without any restrictions. You do lose access to them once your membership is over, but if you ever decide to renew, all your past achievements and progress will be saved. You’ll also have access to Xbox Game Pass for PC. Although there aren’t nearly as many games as there are on Xbox, there are still plenty of AAA titles to keep you sated. Other perks include exclusive membership discounts, the ability to play your games across multiple devices with cloud gaming, free access to EA Play membership, as well as bonus in-game content and rewards. It is an exceptionally good – almost essential – membership for Xbox gamers. New release games are not cheap, and being able to play them without buying them will save you a lot of money and easily recoup the cost of the membership.

Looking for more deals? Check out all of the best Xbox deals today.

Corinne Busche wasn’t looking for a job when she sat down for lunch with BioWare’s leadership team in 2019. She had been a fan of BioWare’s games since the days of Dragon Age: Origins, and she wanted to, in her words, “meet my heroes.”

“So I went to lunch with a couple of folks in the leadership team at BioWare, and we started riffing about progression systems and skill trees and economies, and we just really resonated with one another,” Busche remembers. “And much to my surprise, they expressed an interest in me joining, and it was kind of the question you don’t have to ask me twice. That was such a dream opportunity, and to be able to step in this space, visit the studio, see my favorite characters on display throughout the walls, I was immediately sold. Immediately.”

Busche was coming off a stint at Maxis, where she helped design the systems on various The Sims projects. In taking the helm of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, she became part of a wider talent pipeline flowing from Maxis to other parts of the games industry. It’s a pipeline that includes the likes of Eric Holmberg-Weidler, who was credited with fine-tuning many of the systems that comprised The Sims 4 before spearheading the Professions revamp in World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight expansion. Justin Camden, who also worked on The Sims, is one of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s technical designers.

Systematic discovery

At first blush, it might not seem like The Sims has much in common with an RPG like Dragon Age outside the fact that they both feature romance in some way. Going back to its release in 2000, The Sims has garnered a reputation as a casual, frequently silly lifestyle simulator; the game where you remove a ladder from a swimming pool and watch your poor little Sims drown. Under the hood, though, The Sims is a complex web of systems, progression and relationships. Sims have jobs. They gain skills. They fall in love.

“Maxis is a great place for designers to hone their skills,” Busche says. “There are many projects across differing platforms and service models happening simultaneously which give a rare opportunity for a breadth of experience. What people may not realize about the Sims, given its playful outward nature, is the underlying systems and mechanics are deceptively deep – especially as a dev. One of the more interesting parts of coming up through Maxis as a designer is the experience you get with simulation, emergent gameplay, and emotionally relatable player experiences. It’s just a really unique opportunity being a part of these teams, and those are skillsets that can benefit a number of different games and genres.”

Busche’s systems design background is evident throughout The Veilguard. It includes extensive skill trees, with sub-classes that are geared around different weapon types and styles of play, and the choices you make also resonate deeply throughout the story. It’s also possible to level up your relationship with individual factions and shopkeepers, which in turn opens up new possibilities for acquiring unique gear, and characters bear long-lasting scars depending on the choices you make. Systems are layered throughout Dragon Age, deepening the player’s intertwined connection with the world and the characters that inhabit it.

“What’s so wonderful about [The Sims] is there’s so much autonomy in that game, and we find that RPG players are hungry for that same sense of autonomy, making decisions, influencing characters. And what you might not realize in the Sims is behind the scenes, there are some really robust progression systems, game economies, character behaviors for their own AI and autonomy… a lot of really fascinating parallels,” Busche says. “So in that regard, I’m very grateful to my time there, being able to take some of those learnings, whether it’s about how to convey romantic progression to the player, or design skill progression, game pacing, a lot of really interesting transferable ideas that you might not think about on the surface.”

In The Sims, characters go through their daily lives in an idealized world filled with strange but charming characters like Bonehilda (Dragon Age, it should be mentioned, has its own living skeleton in Manfred). While Dragon Age’s characters are still bound by the demands of the story, BioWare goes out of its way to make them seem more alive. As we talk about in our hands-on preview that went up last week, Dragon Age is filled with little messages noting how, for instance, you “traded verbal jabs” with Solas. As we’ll go into in a future article, both platonic and romantic relationships are a big part of how characters grow in Dragon Age.

And of course, as anyone who has played a BioWare or Sims game knows, both games have their share of woohooing.

How Dragon Age learned from The Sims’ character creator

Ultimately, though, it’s the character creator where the resemblance between the two is the most apparent. Dragon Age’s character creator is extensive, allowing players to adjust physical characteristics including chest size, the crookedness of a character’s nose, and whether or not their eyes are bloodshot, among other features. While custom characters are a time-honored BioWare tradition going back to the days of Baldur’s Gate, The Veilguard draws from the lessons of The Sims in everything from body customization to the flow of the user interface.

Cross-pollination like this is common within EA, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard borrows from plenty of other sources as well. That incredible hair technology, for example, got its start within EA’s sports games, meaning your Rook can have a luscious mane like Lionel Messi. But the character creator is perhaps the greatest inflection point between Dragon Age and The Sims.

“Character creators are extremely complex, and in many ways even more personal. It’s so important that players feel they can be represented and feel pride in that representation as they go through the creation process,” Busche says. “In particular, I remember we were struggling with some of our iconography, and we turned to each other and said ‘how did The Sims 4 handle this?’ While the technology and UI is quite a bit different, the underlying goals and lessons were quite similar.”

She adds that Maxis has a “tremendous wealth of knowledge when it comes to representing gender, identity, and the surprising number of localization issues that come along with that when you’re releasing in different regions and languages.”

“It’s always nice when you can draw from that prior experience. See what worked, what didn’t, and how expectations have evolved. The fun part is now we get to pay that forward and have been sharing our knowledge with other teams,” Busche says.

On a moment-to-moment basis, of course, The Sims and Dragon Age are two very different games with very different goals. One is a single-player action RPG, the other a lifestyle sim. As studios, too, BioWare and Maxis are in very different places right now. The Sims has been a powerhouse franchise for more than two decades, and EA is seeking to expand its reach with a new movie. BioWare, meanwhile, is seeking to rebuild after stumbling badly with Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda.

But when creator Will Wright first decided to focus on the people inhabiting his games, the world he crafted wasn’t too dissimilar from the one found in Dragon Age. Both use unique systems to create reactive, imaginative worlds full of interesting choices, filled with characters with their own inner lives. It’s a philosophy that’s always been part of BioWare’s legacy; now, in The Veilguard, it finally gets to be on full display once again.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on October 31. Make sure to keep an eye on IGN all this month as our IGN First coverage continues.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Final Fantasy 16 released on PC yesterday and there’s already a nice little discount available. At Green Man Gaming, you can get 15% off Final Fantasy 16 by using the code ‘SEP15’ at checkout (see the game here at GMG). This drops its price from $49.99 to $42.49. Additionally, if you’ve bought from GMG before and achieved a certain XP status, you can skip the code, because the price is even lower, at $40.99. That’s a nice little deal for a game that just came out on PC, so take advantage of it while it’s still available!

Final Fantasy XVI Is 15% Off With Code ‘SEP15’ at Checkout

Square Enix has finally made public its dissatisfaction with Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s commercial performance, admitting neither game met profit expectations.

In a financial results briefing held May 13 but only released today, September 18, Takashi Kiryu, president and representative director of Square Enix said: “In the HD Games sub-segment, we released multiple new titles, including major titles such as Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but profits unfortunately did not meet our expectations.”

Kiryu went on to suggest Square Enix cannibalized sales of its Final Fantasy games released during the financial year ending March 2024.

“We recognize that issues remain in the Digital Entertainment segment,” Kiryu admitted. “The HD Games sub-segment failed to better its profitability, posting operating losses in every year of our previous medium-term plan. In addition to this, we did not manage our title portfolio across the company as well as we could have, which I believe resulted in opportunity losses due to cannibalization between our own titles.”

Square Enix released Final Fantasy 16 in June 2023, then Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth just over half a year later in February 2024. Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth both launched as PlayStation 5 exclusives, and while Square Enix has announced a sales figure for Final Fantasy 16, it has yet to do so for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the second game in the company’s trilogy of Final Fantasy 7 remakes.

The company has already announced a significant rework of its business as it fights for profitability. It has a new multi-platform plan that encompasses PC and potentially Xbox and the next Nintendo console (Final Fantasy 16 launched on PC this week). But it has also canceled a number of games, and, Kiryu revealed, taken steps to better curate its pipeline of games.

“In the case of the HD Game sub-segment, sales of individual games will remain the key variable, but we believe that we will be able to exercise some degree of control over that volatility by carefully curating our pipeline over the next three years,” Kiryu said. “By also working steadily to improve our profitability, we intend to offset the weakness in SD games to achieve overall profitability.”

Square Enix has now extended the timelines for a portion of its pipeline, “in part because of the massive amount of time required to develop HD games, and in part because we determined that we should rethink how best to deliver some of the titles we had under development to our customers,” Kiryu revealed.

Final Fantasy isn’t the only Square Enix series struggling. Its Splatoon-style game Foamstars also flopped and has since gone free-to-play.

So, what’s next for Square Enix? Square Enix has Kingdom Hearts 4, the third game in the Final Fantasy remake trilogy, and Dragon Quest 12 in the works. In January, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida said it might be time for a younger generation to lead the franchise and helm Final Fantasy 17.

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.

HTC Vive has upgraded its lineup of Extended Reality headsets with the new HTC Vive Focus Vision, promising gamers built-in eye-tracking, improved cameras, and better hand-tracking. If actual reality is just too much and you’ve recently received an unexpected inheritance from a wealthy benefactor, the new headset is available to pre-order today.

HTC Vive Focus Vision price:

• USD $999
• UK £999
• €1229
• AUD 1,899 inc GST

Not to be confused with the currently available Vive XR Elite, Focus 3, Focus Plus, Pro 2, or Viveflow VR models, the HTC Vive Focus Vision will also offer a DisplayPort mode that will connect directly with a PC’s graphics card to let VR gamers work their way through their Steam VR back catalog without a drop in visual quality. The only catch with that feature is that it won’t be available until “late 2024.”

HTC Vive Focus Vision features:

• Built-in eye-tracking and motorized auto-IPD adjustment
• DisplayPort mode for stunning, visually lossless PCVR experiences
• Dual 16MP color cameras for stereoscopic full-color passthrough
• Up to 120-degree FOV and 90Hz refresh rate. Support for 120Hz refresh rate via
• DisplayPort mode coming late 2024
• Combined 5k resolution across both eyes
• Depth sensor for scene recognition
• Infra-red sensor for enhanced tracking in low-light conditions

“VIVE Focus Vision gives you the best of both worlds, with outstanding standalone capabilities, and DisplayPort mode support for visually lossless PCVR experiences,” said Shen Ye, Global Head of Product at HTC VIVE.

“Now, PC gamers can bring the same high-end headsets used in VR arcades into their homes. We’re taking everything to the next level with built-in eye-tracking, stereo color passthrough cameras for depth-correct Mixed Reality, and even an infra-red sensor for enhanced hand tracking in low-light conditions.”

Extended Reality – or XR – is the umbrella term for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies. HTC Vive is one of the biggest players in the space, and its new toy will compete with the Meta Quest 3 and of course the Apple Vision Pro. We’ll let you know how it stacks up against them when its released later this year.

Rachel Weber is IGN’s Managing Editor.