Category: Video Games

Bloober Team has released the first major update for the Silent Hill 2 remake in Patch 1.04, addressing myriad gameplay issues as well as improving the survival horror game’s technical performance.

The patch notes were released on Steam and outline dozens of changes made to Silent Hill 2. Some address funnier bugs like protagonist James teleporting through a peephole and getting stuck in a window near Neely’s Bar.

On the technical front, Bloober Team has reduced visual glitches when using the latest version of Nvidia DLSS, added an option to enable DLSS frame generation in the menu when using DLSS for supersampling, and added support for AMD FSR 3.1.1. The full patch notes are available below.

Bloober Team and publisher Konami released the Silent Hill 2 remake on October 8 to glowing critical reception and strong sales, leaving many fans of the previously dormant horror franchise eager for more.

Bloober has said it’s open to making other Silent Hill games, though at the moment is focused on its sci-fi survival horror game Cronos: The New Dawn.

In our 8/10 review of the Silent Hill 2 remake, IGN said: “Silent Hill 2 is a great way to visit – or revisit – one of the most dread-inducing destinations in the history of survival horror.”

Silent Hill 2 Remake Patch 1.04 Notes

Technical

– Reduced visual glitches when using the latest version of NVIDIA DLSS.
– Added an option to enable DLSS frame generation in the menu when using DLSS for supersampling.
– NVIDIA Reflex is now active when DLSS frame generation is enabled.
– Added support for AMD FSR 3.1.1.
– Added an option to enable AMD Fluid Motion Frames in the menu when using FSR 3.1 for supersampling.
– Updated Intel Nanites to support upcoming driver updates.
– Improved performance and optimization for Steam Deck.
– Fixed stuttering issues related to sky map generation.
– Added an option to enable/disable HZB culling to fix stuttering on some AMD/Intel GPUs.
– All graphic settings should be saved locally.
Gameplay

– Fixed an issue with translation for UI “High” preset not being translated and displayed correctly
– Fixed an issue with Wooden Plank appearing during James’ death animation
– Fixed streaming issue where staring at the walls inside the Grand Market caused problems with loading all of the environment around James
– Fixed an issue where interacting with the wrong side of the peephole in Brookhaven Hospital teleported James to the other side
– Fixed an issue where breaking windows near Neely’s Bar got James stuck in the window frame
– Fixed an issue that allowed James to access the inaccessible balcony in Blue Creek Apartments
– Fixed an issue with Abstract Daddy’s behavior during boss fight where the enemy was not hitting James properly
– Fixed multiple issues with Abstract Daddy’s 3rd TV – it should now have the correct audio, and the wall won’t interfere with its position
– Fixed an issue with a question mark from the Conference Room not disappearing after obtaining Cinderella figurine in Lakeview Hotel
– Fixed an issue with collision detection with the Dayroom walls in Brookhaven Hospital
– Fixed an issue where James was falling under the map when approaching Laura entering Brookhaven Hospital from the bushes on the left
– Removed debug numbers displayed behind wallpapers in Blue Creek Apartments’ Clock Room
– Resolved an issue with James not being able to leave the 3F corridor in the Lakeview Hotel
– Fixed an issue with the lightbulb on the 3rd floor of Blue Creek Apartments constantly switching on and being impervious to destruction
– Resolved an issue with the small coffee table blocking James in the corner of the room located in Woodside Apartments
– Fixed an issue where after completing the Disgust Path in Labyrinth, the player was forced to do it all over again
– Fixed an issue with Spider Mannequins getting stuck when attacking James while he is going through squeeze traversal
– Fixed an issue with James getting stuck in the window frame while attacking Lying Figures located outside of the window
– Added more natural movement for James when switching weapons while aiming
– Fixed an issue with triggering Spider Mannequin event on Fear Path in the Labyrinth multiple times
– Improved the ability to pick up items during the final boss fight
– Fixed an issue with picture frames overlapping in the Moth Room
– Improved the deformation of Nurses’ skirts
– Fixed an issue occurring when displaying the information about unlocking NewGame+ which didn’t appear in the player’s chosen language
– Fixed visible unloading of the door of an abandoned garage in the west side of South Vale
– Fixed question mark on the map during Chute Puzzle in Woodside Apartments

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Bloober Team has admitted it knew it had to “evolve” after releasing The Medium, a decision which led to the development of bigger games such as the Silent Hill 2 remake and the upcoming Cronos: The New Dawn.

Cronos director and producer Jacek Zieba told IGN that The Medium, which arrived in 2021 as a psychological horror adventure game alongside a Metascore of 71 on Metacritic, became a turning point for the studio as it looked to make bigger and better games.

“I think after The Medium it was very clear to us that we needed to evolve,” Zieba said. “It was like, ‘let’s end the chapter of the adventure games.’ Layers of Fear, Observer, and The Medium, [games that were] strange, experimental, with fixed camera tools. ‘Okay, let’s finish with that.’

“We also want to evolve, so let’s go into survival horror, let’s create something of our own, something different than other games in the genre in terms of world, story, and also gameplay. Let’s create another game of our dreams.”

The Silent Hill 2 remake was somewhat of a coming out party for Bloober Team to show it could make a big budget survival horror adventure. It arrived October 8 to glowing critical reception and strong sales, and Bloober Team is open to making more Silent Hill games too, either remakes or something completely fresh.

But the “game of our dreams” mentioned by Zieba is Cronos, a sci-fi survival horror set in an unforgiving post-apocalyptic future in 1980s Poland. This will be the true test for Bloober Team as it looks to solidify itself as a developer capable of mainstream releases without having the framework of Silent Hill 2, one of the most beloved horror games of all time, to build upon.

In our 8/10 review of the Silent Hill 2 remake, IGN said: “Silent Hill 2 is a great way to visit – or revisit – one of the most dread-inducing destinations in the history of survival horror.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

After Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s latest patch made pretty much everything about the PvE Operations mode harder, one heroic player has done the Emperor proud by coming up with the game’s ultimate cheese.

Space Marine 2 Update 4.0 added a new PvE map and with it the terrifying Tyranid Hierophant Bio-Titan, which ordinarily must be tackled by a squad of three players working together to down this enormous xenos monstrosity.

After leaving the final elevator room and entering the map’s boss fight area, players are meant to activate a central terminal to link their sidearm with ultra powerful fortress lascannons — powerful enough to down even a Bio-Titan.

You then use your sidearm as a targeting system for the cannons, aiming at the Bio-Titan as the guns get to work. After one barrage the cannons are out of juice, so you have to recharge them by spinning nearby energy stations, which in turn spawns the Tyranid horde. Meanwhile, the Bio-Titan will bombard your position with high-damage artillery fire.

Once the cannons are recharged, you need to activate the central terminal to link your sidearm once again, aim, and let the cannons fire. You need to repeat this process a number of times to bring the Bio-Titan down. It’s a stressful boss fight with a lot going on; the Tyranids can easily overwhelm your squad, even on the easier difficulties, and the Bio-Titan itself can effectively one-shot you if you hang about the same area for too long. Crank the mission up to Lethal — the new, hardest difficulty added with Update 4.0 — and you’re in for a world of hurt.

Or are you? One Space Marine 2 player has worked out a way to solo the Bio-Titan even on Lethal difficulty, exposing a flaw in the design of the mission that the developers at Saber Interactive may want to patch out at some point (once they’re done addressing the backlash to Update 4.0, perhaps).

It all started with redditor RedditOakley’s discovery that it is possible to deal damage to the Bio-Titan when it walks past the Space Marines just after they step out of the final elevator room but, crucially, before activating the terminal (this imposing moment was used to reveal the Bio-Titan in promotional videos). This (tiny) damage is reflected when the Bio-Titan’s health bar displays, and then you do all that fortress cannon stuff we mentioned before.

RedditOakley theorized that it would thus be possible to continue to damage and eventually kill the Bio-Titan using Space Marine weapons and without having to go through the cannon activation process, and that theory turned out to be true. The only question was, from where would you safely shoot the Bio-Titan down? After all, in Space Marine 2 ammo is scarce; infinite ammo resources are ammo crates and loadout pods only; and the swarm can quickly become too much to handle.

The answer is the elevator room itself, which, if you never activate the terminal, is a safe haven of sorts (although you won’t see the Bio-Titan’s health bar). “I fired up a solo Minimal [the easiest difficulty] run and progressed to where the door opens and you meet the titan,” RedditOakley explained. “We have the ammo crate next to the elevator and a loadout pod available, the door to those never closes as the room is used to spawn enemy waves.

“The titan itself will walk around the battlefield, and often stay close to where you’re standing. This is the range where it is possible to shoot and damage it with your guns. The titan will even lob acid globes at you here after a while.

“So that’s what I did. I just kept shooting, and shooting and shooting, clearing the waves and [tougher] extremis that came along the way. I didn’t have any way of seeing my progress as the health bar isn’t visible in this area, so all I could do was keep shooting and praying.

“Then eventually a red hit marker showed up and the end cutscene appeared.”

In their post, RedditOakley issued the Space Marine 2 community a challenge: kill the Bio-Titan using Space Marine guns only on the hardest difficulty, Lethal. Of course, someone answered the call: redditor xD3viLzx, who used the Sniper class and the Las Fusil to slowly — and I mean slowly — solo the Bio-Titan on Lethal.

As you can tell from the footage of the run, xD3viLzx popped in and out of the elevator room to snipe at the Bio-Titan, returning to grab ammo from the loadout pod when needed. Whittling down the Bio-Titan’s health in this way took 45 minutes, rinsing and repeating while occasionally avoiding a barrage from the Tyranid itself and dealing with waves of enemies. It’s a monotonous cheese, for sure, but an effective one. Upon the final blow the mission ended properly, the victory recorded as it would if the Bio-Titan were killed as Saber intended, and the appropriate rewards dished out.

It should be noted that this cheese isn’t a win button. xD3viLzx still had to make it to the mission’s final area in one piece on Lethal solo, which for me is a more impressive feat than the Bio-Titan cheese itself. xD3viLzx’s perfect parry was on point, but there were a few hairy moments in the run when the AI-controlled teammates saved the day with a revive. Still, the cheese makes the hardest part of the mission relatively trivial. You just need time and the patience of a saint; the entire run took one hour and 14 minutes.

So, will Saber cut this cheese out the game? It’s promised a patch this week to address balance concerns sparked by Update 4.0’s heavy nerfs. Perhaps the poor old Bio-Titan will get a buff of its own.

IGN has plenty more on Space Marine 2, including a deep-dive on the game’s burgeoning modding scene and accompanying complications. Last month, Saber Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits told IGN how the breakout success of Space Marine 2 had “changed everything” for the company. And eagle-eyed fans have spotted the Space Marine chapter now all-but confirmed to get a cosmetic pack after the Dark Angels, and even an unannounced new Thousand Sons enemy type.

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.

Nintendo is working to take down images of its new unannounced Switch game after the internet — as expected — leaked it online.

Earlier this month, Nintendo asked those who successfully signed up for its then mysterious Switch Online Playtest not to reveal what it is once it went live. Documentation included a request “that you do not discuss or disclose content from either the Nintendo Switch Online: Playtest Program test software or website with others.”

At the time, the internet collectively scoffed at that request. And now, it’s all out in the wild. Today, October 21, ahead of the playtest going live on October 23, some users were able to download the playtest, which weighs in at 2.2GB. Images of this website and its details are now spreading across social media, Discords, and subreddits.

The leak appears to have been kickstarted by X/Twitter user @Ethan_ThisGuy, who posted images of the playtest website along with the post: “hope Nintendo doesn’t kill me for this.”

hope nintendo doesn’t kill me for this pic.twitter.com/dgVHQFCaXX

— Ethan :3 (@Ethan_ThisGuy) October 21, 2024

Spoilers for Nintendo Switch Online: Playtest Program test follow:

Those images, which X/Twitter has now pulled offline “in response to a report from the copyright holder” (a clear sign of their legitimacy), reveals a social MMO hybrid experience some are already comparing to the Miiverse, Nintendo’s discontinued social network for 3DS and Wii U.

The idea, according to leaked images of the Nintendo website, is to work with other players to develop a massive planet via farmed resources and building on your own plot of land. Players use Beacons that emit a healing light that “purifies and develops the land.” The idea is to place multiple Beacons until your planetary block is fully developed.

The player’s Beacon sounds like a protected space in which only they can move, lift, or edit items. Outside their Beacon is considered a public space anyone can work in.

There’s a ‘Dev Core’ that acts as a player hub. Here you level up your character, obtain items, and talk to other players. Players earn points for developing the land and socializing with others.

There’s a definite user-generated content (UGC) aspect to this new game, and you’ll be able to share what you make with others. This is very Nintendo: it says to create UGC players must pass a test in-game to show they understand “the importance of respectful communication.” Only then will players obtain a UGC License and be able to create UGC. There is, as you’d expect, a player report feature, which I imagine will come in handy for tackling all those… certain things players will inevitably build.

And finally, as Nintendo had signaled, it recommends playing this new game in TV setup with a wired connection, given it’s a server-based experience.

That’s all we have for now. It’s odd that Nintendo would insist on such secrecy around what sounds like a relatively straightforward Switch online MMO (we still don’t know the name of the thing), but hopefully we’ll know more when it actually goes live later this week and, well, the whole thing inevitably leaks.

This is a Switch experience for now, but the big question is whether it will also be available on the upcoming Switch 2, which Nintendo has yet to formally announce.

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.

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