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IGN Video Games

Capcom Is Raising Employee Salaries by 30 Percent

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 01:32 PM PDT

Capcom announced that it is raising the average employee salary at the company by 30 percent as well as introducing a new bonus structure tied to the overall company's business performance. Capcom is also establishing a new Chief Human Resources Officer role.

According to a new investor relations statement on Capcom's website, these initiatives are intended to retain game developer talent as well as boost overall productivity.

"Driven by its philosophy of being a Creator of Entertainment Culture that Stimulates Your Senses, Capcom will work to address the issues facing our society while aiming to improve its corporate value and establishing a relationship of trust with employees and stakeholders," the statement reads.

Capcom will also continue to improve individual employee performance review processes and its training programs going forward. Capcom's Human Resources will be reorganized around four departments in order to continue creating high-quality AAA titles sustainably. The R&D Human Resources department, Health and Productivity Management department, People Strategy Team, and the Human Resources department will work under a new Chief Human Resources Officer.

Capcom states, "With this structure, Capcom will work to bolster productivity by further providing a comfortable workplace environment for employees and driving forward its personnel acquisition and training activities."

Capcom has managed to hit its stride in releasing critically acclaimed and successful games in recent years, such as the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes, Devil May Cry 5, and Monster Hunter World, leading to record sales and profits. It isn't the only company increasing employee wages either. Earlier this month, Bandai Namco announced it would increase pay by 50,000 yen per month.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

Why Roberta Williams Is Re-embarking on a Colossal Cave Adventure in 2022

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 01:00 PM PDT

Even after she retired from making adventure games, Sierra On-Line co-founder Roberta Williams never stopped having adventures.

After a legendary career as a pioneer of the adventure genre, creating games like King's Quest, Mystery House, Phantasmagoria, and many more, Williams has spent her retirement sailing all over the world with her husband and Sierra co-founder Ken Williams. And she's still creating, too, having just published her first novel last year - a historical fiction entitled Farewell to Tara.

"I do adventure games and I live my life as an adventure," she tells me in an interview at GDC last week. "I love adventure! I'll go and get it wherever I can get it."

But when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted lockdowns that halted many of her usual adventures, Williams needed a new project. At the time, Ken was learning Unity with the intent of making a new game of his own when Williams suddenly remembered a game that had been very, very special to her years ago: Colossal Cave Adventure.

"Without Colossal Cave, Sierra On-Line would never have existed, and I would not have my career, or Ken either," she says.

"I was so immediately drawn into it I got addicted to it, literally," Williams recalls of her first time playing the 1976 text-based adventure. "I could not stop playing it. I played it for weeks. I wanted to get every point, and this is a hard game to get all the points. And I did it, and when it was done, I wanted to play more games like this, and there weren't any. Not like Colossal Cave. I remember thinking how I was so drawn into this game to the point where I couldn't quit, I just had to keep going, and I couldn't be the only one. That's why I started with Mystery House, my first design, and I went from there."

Williams suggested to Ken that instead of his project they take a crack at remaking Colossal Cave Adventure, turning the old text-based design into a modern, 3D game.

"His eyes kind of brightened up," she remembers. "He said, 'I don't know if we can get the rights.' So I left the office and went and did something else, and then an hour later I came in to ask him about lunch and he said, 'I just got off the phone with Don Woods.'"

Don Woods isn't the creator of Colossal Cave, but he was a critical part of its ultimate popularity. The game was actually made by spelunker and programmer William Crowther back in 1976 based on his ex-wife Patricia Crowther's records of a real-life spelunking trip, combined with elements of Dungeons & Dragons. Then, while he was on vacation, a bunch of his coworkers found the game left on a mainframe at the research company where Crowther worked, and began distributing it to other computers. Which is how Woods found it, and began to build on Colossal Cave with more high-fantasy elements, puzzles, a scoring system, and much more. It's Woods' version that was then distributed more widely, and that Williams played and used as inspiration for her own adventure games.

Woods explained to Ken on the phone that no one technically owns Colossal Cave Adventure, due to the organic way it was disseminated. Neither he nor Crowther had ever tried to claim rights to it. Instead, they wanted it to remain free to play, remake, retool, and iterate upon. So the Williamses could remake it if they wanted — as long as they didn't try to claim rights to it themselves. As Roberta Williams puts it: "It's the world's game."

Which is how Roberta and Ken Williams ended up remaking Colossal Cave Adventure as a 3D adventure game for PC and VR, in partnership with Unity. In many ways, it's as true a remake as they could create. All the original source code is being used, as well as all the original narration. Williams says she isn't adding any of her own puzzles either, and while players no longer have to type commands like "take key" to get around, the same look messages, items, and actions are available — just in a point-and-click style this time.

[Update: Ken Williams reached out after publication to clarify how the original source code is being used. "We're sticking to the source as close as we can, but it's more like constantly referring to a book while writing the script for a movie that is based on the book. They are different mediums and don't directly translate."]

"I want people that have played this game… to feel yeah, this is right," Williams says. "This is Colossal Cave. It's history. I get to see it now."

But that's just it — now people get to really see the cave, not just imagine it. What Williams is bringing to the table is her own vision of what Colossal Cave Adventure looks like. She's working with multiple artists to remain true to the original narration, especially where there was a lot of detailed description of caves, items, and creatures. But in some places, she says, there isn't much description. And this is where she's been able to add her own spin.

"The one thing we don't want [is], this is a cave. And there's cave, and more cave, and cave and cave and cave. Rocks and stalactites and stalagmites. But there wasn't a lot of story woven into the original design…so I've woven in some story to make it more interesting and to help us graphically."

She can't share too many details yet, but indicates that this includes defining the dwarves a bit more with personality and roles as miners, and fleshing out existing areas with extra details like an ancient civilization with a reptilian religion, artifacts left behind by previous explorers, and the area with giants and golden eggs. Plus, everything is getting music and sound effects, of course.

What you knew 25 years ago is not necessarily what you know now. It was really kind of scary at first.

And it'll all be in VR, too. Originally the plan was just to remake Colossal Cave Adventure on PC. But as Ken tells me in the same interview, they arrived at VR "accidentally."

"I found a picture of me from 25 years ago with VR goggles from that time on," he says. "I said at the time that I didn't think these are gonna happen for a while. It really seemed uncomfortable and unfun, why would someone want to do this? But then we effectively went to sleep for 25 years, a modern Rip Van Winkle."

As they started working on Colossal Cave, they needed art, and began poking around the Unity asset store. Ken found good assets there, he said, but wanted more, and consulted his 3D artist colleague on the project Marcus Maximus Mera.

Mera, a big VR advocate, encouraged them to try it too, especially because Unity would allow them to develop in both. "But then we discovered it's not quite as simple as that," Ken adds.

VR, he notes, made the project much more complex. There were framerate issues. At one point, someone asked him if the game would be tethered or untethered, and he didn't know what that meant. "If we had known all we do now the project would have been a lot shorter," he says.

Roberta adds: "For Ken and I, it's been a big learning experience. What you knew 25 years ago is not necessarily what you know now. It was really kind of scary at first. We had to learn really, really quick, get the lingo and the technology and really re-jigger our minds around what we were doing and jump in there. And we did it. Ken and I are real fast learners and we like challenges. I would call us risk-takers, we've always been that way. We were up to the challenge and we're in it."

In some ways, the Williamses' task fits in well with their own personal experiences. After being away from games for over two decades, they've arrived to take a game that hasn't really had a full remake, and reimagine it for the modern world. Williams compares it to taking a silent film and remaking it today with modern effects.

But one thing hasn't changed, she continues: adventure games are still adventure games, and storytelling is still storytelling.

"They say there are like 37 or 36 actual stories ever written," she says. "Every story since ancient times has fallen into one of those storylines or themes. I think that's true, and I think in the case of game design at least for adventure games and probably for many, many games, it's the same pattern. They fall into a certain theme and a certain way that it happens and to figure out a new one is probably almost impossible."

Having been away from development for so long, Williams is candid that she hasn't really played games during that time, so she's not looking to what the adventure game has evolved into for inspiration. She's just remaking Colossal Cave Adventure as it was, but now with visuals, sound, and music. She thinks old Sierra fans and adventure game players from back in the day will naturally be interested in the reimagining, but is unsure what a modern audience will make of it. If it sells well, she says, she and Ken might make more games, possibly revisiting Ken's idea that she diverted him from when she suggested Colossal Cave.

"As far as younger people who have never experienced it, they've experienced all the games that are out now and are very used to them — this is what I don't know," Williams says. "Is it going to be popular? Is it going to be something they want to try? But it's so different. It's not hand-eye coordination. It's not quick reactions. It's not multiplayer. It's its own thing. It's slower-paced. You have to think, you have to explore, you have to figure stuff out…"

I suggest that some people might already love games like that today.

"I hope so! If so, this might really bring adventure games back. That would be nice."

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

This article was amended after publication to accurately reflect Patricia Crowther's contribution to the original Colossal Cave Adventure.

Someone Has Modded a Clever Recreation of Elden Ring's Missing 'Age of Absolute' Ending

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 12:34 PM PDT

A video is circulating purporting to show off a datamined secret seventh ending to Elden Ring that hasn't been seen before — but as cool as the video is, it's sadly fake.

Spoilers for the ending of Elden Ring follow — read at your own risk!

The video, posted by Elden Ring YouTuber Garden of Eyes conveniently around April Fool's Day, shows off the supposed "Age Absolute" ending. The first half of the video is the same as other endings, where the Tarnished restores Marika's severed head to her body. The differences begin as a five-fingered hand begins to appear in the background behind them as they do.

The scene then cuts to the throne room shown in other endings, but instead of the Tarnished sitting on the Elden Throne, the five-fingered hand is present, with the Tarnished appearing to worship it. The voice-over that plays is also the same as other endings, except for the final line: "The Age Absolute."

There actually is some precedent for people believing in an "Age Absolute" hidden ending. As Elden Ring dataminer ZullietheWitch tells IGN, among the other files for ending subtitles is a subtitle for "The Age Absolute," immediately following "The Age of Order" — which is one of the endings you can get through normal gameplay. However, Zullie believes this is an alternate reading of the same line, rather than a separate ending. Not only are there no text prompts or cutscene files for it in the game's files, but other ending subtitles apparently have similar alternate text versions that aren't used, so there's precedent.

Furthermore, Zullie says, the "Usher the Age Absolute" prompt shown in the video Garden posted doesn't actually exist in the game's files.

So how did this cutscene get put together then? Garden didn't respond to our request for comment in time, but from Zullie's background info and discussion in Garden's community Discord it's not too hard to piece together. The first half of the ending, with Marika, is exactly the same as other endings.

The giant, five-fingered hand doesn't appear anywhere in Elden Ring, sure, but it appears to just be an amalgamation of the models for the Two Fingers and the Three Fingers, both characters you can meet at different points in the actual game. The final shot of the Tarnished worshipping the five-fingered hand could easily just be a shot taken with a free camera of the Tarnished doing the Rapture gesture.

And the voiceover? That bit might be real. According to both Zullie and several members of Garden's Discord server, the voice line is from actual in-game data. But given its similarities to other lines, it's again likely just an alternate version of the Age of Order dialogue that wasn't used.

So sure, it's a fake, but it's a darn cool one to imagine, especially in a game where so much is still being discovered on a daily basis. And fortunately, there are still multiple other endings you can pursue with various obscure requirements and meanings - we have a guide to all of those right here.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Hyper Light Breaker, a 3D Co-op Game Set In the Hyper Light Drifter Universe, Announced

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 11:00 AM PDT

Heart Machine has revealed Hyper Light Breaker, a 3D, co-op focused game set in the same world as the cult classic Hyper Light Drifter, coming to Steam Early Access in Spring 2023.

The announcement marks the sixth birthday of Hyper Light Drifter, the studio's seminal action/adventure game that took players on a beautiful but melancholic journey through a ruined world. That first game was built around challenging combat and a wealth of secrets that offered brief glimpses into the game's otherwise opaque narrative.

However, where Drifter offered a 2D single-player experience (albeit with a local co-op mode that was added post-release), Heart Machine is now looking at creating Breaker in 3D, with online co-op as the focus.

The announcement trailer (below) seems to indicate that Breaker will combine Drifter's exacting combat with the elegant traversal mechanics seen in Heart Machine's second game, Solar Ash. Speaking to IGN, creative director Alx Preston also noted that it will be "a little more systems-heavy, with more RPG mechanics" compared to Drifter, complete with a range of distinct playable classes.

"And when we say online cooperative play, we mean multiple players, not just you and another person; we're looking at a group of players that can go out and kill some monsters together."

The online aspect represents a second major technological leap for Heart Machine since its debut; Solar Ash saw it make the transition from 2D to 3D, resulting in a game that was well-received, but took nearly twice as long to make as Drifter.

We asked Preston if having already made this transition might result in a smoother development cycle for its new 3D game. "Yeah. I mean, that is definitely part of it, now that we've made that transition into Unreal and built up the technology. It's important for us to make sure that we're releasing content on a more regular basis, and we aren't locked into a very focused mentality without being super public about it for multiple years on end."

The plan to announce Breaker roughly a year before its intended launch on Steam Early Access is a big part of this desire for transparency, and marks a natural progression from Drifter's early success on Kickstarter.

"We want to get Breaker out there. We want to start talking openly about development, about the process, doing live streams and all sorts of fun stuff like that. Because I think on Drifter, after the Kickstarter, we ended up doing something similar on a smaller scale, where we can engage on a regular basis with that particular community."

"We're looking at a group of players that can go out and kill some monsters together."

While Solar Ash was a departure from the Hyper Light universe, Breaker is very much a part of it. Drifter's story was told without a single word of dialogue, instead opting for environmental cues, alien text that players needed to translate outside of the game, and occasional cutscenes that blurred the line between things that actually happened to the player character, and their own illness-induced hallucinations.

Despite this - or, more likely, because of it - players really bought into Drifter's narrative and, six years on, are still keen to learn more about its world. "There will be threads and things for people that have played Drifter, that they will get some value out of for sure. And certainly, there's an aesthetic and vibe, and the lore of the world that we're continuing to build off of."

Preston adds that you won't need to have played Drifter to know what's going on. "But still, it continues the lineage in a lot of ways."

It's too soon to discuss the story or themes, we're told, but Preston suggests that Breaker will likely follow in Drifter's footsteps, while reflecting ongoing changes within the team as a whole. "I think we tend towards these elements of past experiences that have really shaped or formed us in some ways. For me personally, it's my own health struggles that I've tried to put out there in some fashion or another, and with Solar Ash being a bigger team of people feeding into the story, it became a broader context for those vicious circles that you can go into."

"There's humour that I think we want to tap into a little bit more. We started to do that with Solar Ash a bit. But I think our stories are still going to be dark and about subjects that are really tough to deal with, regardless of the format of the game. Sure, Breaker is online multiplayer, but we still have a story to tell there. We still have a world that we've built, and we still have themes to tap into."

Players can look forward to examining those themes (while killing monsters with their friends) when Hyper Light Breaker hits Steam Early Access in Spring 2023.

Correction: Heart Machine and Gearbox have clarified that Hyper Light Breaker will not be a sequel to Hyper Light Drifter, but will be set in the same universe. We've updated the story to match.

Sean Bell is a freelance writer, podcaster and streamer. You can find his bad jokes and worse opinions on Twitter: @CaptainToss.

Neon White Preview: Hands-On With a High-Speed FPS

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 09:00 AM PDT

At a glance, Neon White might look like a first-person shooter, but it's not really — or not entirely. It plays like a shooter, but the focus is more on speedrunning through levels. It also pulls elements from the visual novel genre to tell a rather in-depth story. During a recent demo, director Ben Esposito explained how these pieces fit together. I have to say, I'm intrigued.

Neon White does have you running, jumping, and shooting from a first-person perspective, but the levels are short. Most can be completed in under a minute. The idea is to play and replay each level, earning rewards as you chart an optimal path to the end, trimming your completion time as you go.

Between levels, the story plays out like a visual novel as you learn what's going on along with White, your amnesiac character. It turns out that Heaven, the eternal paradise, has become infested with demons. To exterminate them, God has enlisted a group of assassins from Hell. You play as one of the assassins, all of whom wear masks and have nicknames based on colors. You can chat up the other characters in a hub area called Central Heaven.

Stairway to Heaven

One unique aspect of Neon White is the weapon and ability system. In each level, you'll pick up various cards that represent weapons you can use to blast enemies. But each card also has an ability you can use by discarding it. These abilities are crucial to completing the levels as fast as possible.

For instance, the Elevate card lets you fire a pistol, but discarding it lets you use a double-jump. The Godspeed card is a precision rifle, but if you scrap it, you get a mid-air horizontal dash. Or, if you're in the mood for something more explosive, the Dominion card works as a rocket launcher. Discard it, and you can zip-line toward any surface. There's a lot of variety, but the cards are placed in fixed locations in each level, which limits your possibilities.

To encourage you to play through levels multiple times, the game offers a variety of rewards you can achieve. Finish within a certain time frame, for instance, and you'll unlock the leaderboard, or the ghost of your best run, so you can race against it to get a better time.

Every level also has a prize hidden in an out-of-the-way area. Prizes can be gifted to other assassins between levels to strengthen your relationships. Developing better relationships opens up its own set of rewards, including new lines of dialogue, memories of your past life, and entirely new levels you can complete as side quests.

These side quests tend to be tougher than the standard levels, and revolve around certain themes. For instance, Violet's levels are filled with spikes you have to avoid as you jump from platform to platform. In Yellow's side quests you can't use your cards' abilities. Instead, you have to figure out clever ways to use enemies and weapons to reach the end.

Every level also has a prize hidden in an out-of-the-way area.

Neon White looks pretty good so far, and I'm eager to get some hands-on time with it to see how it plays for myself. It's set to release for Nintendo Switch and PC later this year.

Chris Reed is a commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

Xbox Backtracks on Removing 'Share to Twitter' Option

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 08:48 AM PDT

Microsoft has backtracked on changes to Xbox that would have removed the option to share captures directly to Twitter.

Earlier this month, reports hinted that an Insider build on Xbox consoles had removed the feature, meaning users would have had to upload screens to the Xbox app before sharing to Twitter from there. Fortunately, Microsoft has reversed course after fans objected, and the latest Xbox Insider update preview restores the option.

Brad Rossetti, the Xbox Insider Program Lead, confirmed the restoration of the feature in the latest beta update on Twitter yesterday.

Sharing your gameplay natively to Twitter through your console helps avoid using your smartphone as a middle man to post captures. Nevertheless, if you want to get a tweet that is more than a few words out, typing that message out on a controller might not always be ideal, so using your smartphone is not always a bad idea.

Sony and Nintendo also allow you to post to Twitter directly on PS5 and Switch. However, Sony has now started rolling out an option for people to auto-upload their PS5 captures on their phones via the PlayStation app.

Nintendo also allows for an option just to send the captures and footage to your smartphone if you do not want to post natively – though it requires additional legwork as you need to use your phone to scan a QR code that appears on the console, and the process itself is a bit awkward. A third-party app called SwitchBuddy helps alleviate that issue if you want to use your smartphone.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Superfuse Preview: Homebrew Your Superpowers in This Diablo-Inspired ARPG

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 07:00 AM PDT

What if there was a Diablo-like ARPG where instead of selecting from a handful of preset abilities, you could handcraft your very own heroic persona down to the finest detail? That's precisely what comic book-inspired superhero adventure game Superfuse hopes to deliver, and so far developer Stitch Heads Entertainment's ambitious undertaking shows a lot of potential. The plethora of combat options feature dozens of combinations of abilities, modifiers, and status effects that pile on submenus within submenus to create one of the most disgustingly customizable hero-builders I've ever seen. It's a stat-consumed nerd's dream, and if Stitch Heads can pull it off I could easily see it becoming my next obsession.

Superfuse is a dungeon crawling style game in the vein of Diablo, but it trades in the wizard hat and dragons for a futuristic sci-fi world wrapped in a comic book aesthetic and art style. As you might expect, you spend a lot of your time blasting your way through hordes of enemies and collecting loot as you explore new areas, tackle quests, and level up. It's a loop you probably know well if, like me, you've been addicted to life-consuming ARPGs of the past. But any similarity to my looting adventures of yesteryear ended the moment I opened up the menu and was greeted by piles upon piles of skill trees and customization options in one of the most intricate power-creation systems I've ever beheld.

From the beginning to the end of my time with Superfuse, it was all about options. After selecting my base hero, The Berserker, a hulking beast of a man with muscles for days, I almost immediately found myself defining what kind of hero I would become, evolving it along the way. It started with progressing down fairly straightforward talent trees to determine the kind of hero I'd develop into, like one upgrade path that was all about brute force and melee domination or another that imbued my Berserker with Thor-like lightning abilities. Progressing down my chosen talent tree unlocked super abilities, such as the ability to lob lightning axes as a part of the lightning-themed talent tree, as well as passive traits meant to synergize with my build.

But things got much more interesting once I began to customize the super abilities I was unlocking with Superfuse's Skill Creator. You see, each ability I unlocked had a dedicated skill menu of its own, where additional modifying sub-abilities could be unlocked to customize how exactly that power works. So in my lightning axe-throwing scenario, I could increase the range of that power, give the axe the ability to bounce off of walls, or even make it split into a cone of multiple axes. The startling number of options available for each power allowed me to make my hero's power my own.

From the beginning to the end of my time with Superfuse, it was all about options.

But it didn't end there. If I didn't like any of the out-of-the-box power customization options, I could access yet another customization sub-menu called Power Fuses, which were modifiers that could be dragged and attached to the Skill Creator tree to homebrew my own effects. The amount of Skill Fuse options were nearly endless, encompassing just about every effect you could think of from adding a poison effect, to sapping health from the enemy upon kill, to spreading the electricity across a whole group of enemies. Each Skill Fuse, once added to the Skill Creator tree could then be modified with its own sub-effects for an even more granular level of customization.

For those keeping score at home, that's five levels of customization. Selecting a hero, then choosing the base powers you want to unlock from that hero's talent trees, then selecting how you want that ability to function within its own dedicated Skill Creator menu, then modifying that skill tree with Power Fuses, and finally modifying those modifiers so they work exactly the way you want. The whole process was completely overwhelming in the best possible way and it was genuinely hard to pull myself away from the menu as I imagined all the different death cocktails I could create with the nigh-endless amount of freedom Superfuse granted me.

This means that when playing with friends, even two superheroes molded from the same character class could operate completely differently, with one Berserker being a melee-focused monster wielding a giant hammer, while another slays from a distance with crazy lightning abilities. I can't wait to see what kinds of crazy concoctions players come up with when Superfuse is released in early access later this year.

Tekken Modder Adds Elden Ring Characters and the Director Says 'Plz Stop It'

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 06:38 AM PDT

A new mod for Tekken 7 has added Elden Ring fan favorites to the roster, but Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada has mixed feelings about it.

Created by Ultraboy, the Elden Ring Modpack replaces several standard Tekken fighters with a variety of Elden Ring characters – including Melina, Ranni, and our favorite Pot Boy, Alexander.

A video of the impressive mod has already gone viral, showcasing just how detailed the characters appear in the game.

Honestly, it's impressive stuff. But Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada isn't quite so impressed.

"Um... Sure, Elden is a Bandai Namco-funded title, and I was the production general manager in charge of Elden, so it's not irrelevant ... it's ridiculously well-made mod but plz stop it lol," he said via Twitter.

When asked if he meant to stop the mod or stop telling him about it, he replied that a lot of people are assuming the mod is official.

"U probably don't know, but there r surprisingly many ppl who think this is official one or make various misunderstandings & contact us," he said. "I DON'T say anything for ur personal enjoyment, but I want u to know that there r ppl in ur community who make noise based on misunderstandings."

So, if you do happen to be playing this wildly-unofficial Tekken mod, just don't tell Katsuhiro Harada about it.

The mod itself replaces Tekken characters for its Elden Ring counterparts. For example, Melina replaces Lidia, Malenia replaces Kunimitsu, and Ranni the Witch replaces Kazumi. Hilariously, a big old lobster replaces Heihachi, while Alexander the Iron Fist (or Pot Boy to his pals) replaces Gigas.

Elden Ring has already seen its fair share of mods itself, with modders adding a new easy mode for those of us who aren't used to the relentless slog of a Souls-like.

Meanwhile, a hidden pause function has been found in the game which doesn't require a mod. Want to read more about Elden Ring? Check out our beginner's guide for all the basics as well as our hints, secrets, and tips to survive.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Call of Duty Player Tries to Prove He's Not Hacking... and Accidentally Proves He's Hacking

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 06:16 AM PDT

Call of Duty: Vanguard semi-pro Kenji has been caught using hacks live on stream, thanks to his own monitor cam… which he was using to try and prove he wasn't hacking.

According to Dexerto, the player was caught out during a 2v2 tournament where he faced iLuhvly and Sasuke who became suspicious of his actions.

Attempting to clear his name after being accused of using wallhacks, Kenji used a monitor cam to showcase his 'legitimate' gameplay – but accidentally exposed himself as a cheater in the process.

A wallhack allows players to see enemy players' positions through walls. As you can see in the video above, Kenji's screen shows boxes highlighting other players' positions, which he had presumably forgotten to turn off when he began streaming his monitor cam.

That said, it didn't seem to help him much – Kenji still lost the final gunfight.

Since accidentally outing himself, Dexerto reports that Kenji has been banned from Checkmate Gaming, the tournament platform he was competing in. He has also since deleted his Twitch account.

Hacking has become a big problem in Call of Duty of late, especially when it comes to Warzone. However, a new anti-cheat measure in the Battle Royale now gives players a "damage shield" when up against cheaters.

"One mitigation technique we've been testing is something we call Damage Shield," it was revealed on the official Warzone blog.

"When the server detects a cheater is tampering with the game in real-time, it disables the cheater's ability to inflict critical damage on other players. This mitigation leaves the cheater vulnerable to real players and allows #TeamRICOCHET to collect information about a cheater's system."

However, cheating isn't just restricted to the Battle Royale. Call of Duty: Vanguard has seen an increase in hackers, with developer Activision Blizzard suggesting that those caught cheating could be banned from future Call of Duty games as well as those in which they're caught.

"Permanent suspensions for security infractions may now apply franchise-wide, including Call of Duty: Vanguard as well as any past, present, and future titles in the Call of Duty franchise," they said. Even the Call of Duty: Vanguard beta suffered from problems with hackers.

If you need some help racking up the kills in Call of Duty: Vanguard without cheating, check out our multiplayer tips and tricks or our handy how-to guides to help you along the way.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Weird West Review

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 06:00 AM PDT

In this alternate universe, the West was won by trying a bunch of ideas so crazy they just might work… and if they don't, hitting the quick-load button to revert to an earlier save and trying something even crazier until you pull it off. Thanks to that freedom to experiment with its world as you explore, Weird West is one of those games that feels like a stealth and combat playground even as it tells five mostly serious, well-written stories with interesting decisions throughout and a thoughtful conclusion. And with so much ground to cover and replayability to investigate, it's well worth putting up with some quirks and underwhelming loot.

What ties Weird West's plot together is a group of shadowy figures using a magical brand to force your character's consciousness into the bodies of various unsuspecting people. It's a clever play on the way so many games have us take control of a character who already exists in that world but still need to bring us up to speed on their identity: here, our character is going through the same confusion we are. On top of that, the fact that our character is also an amnesiac and has no idea how or why they're playing this game of musical bodies is another mind-bending layer of mystery that definitely adds some appropriately intriguing weirdness to Weird West.

Although the tone is generally played straight and dark, with murder, mutilation, and blood everywhere while eerie music builds the mood, the writers at Wolfeye have worked in some good humorous dialogue here and there that keeps things from getting too dour. That's one of many ways in which Weird West reminds me of my fondness for the classic Fallout 2, including the isometric perspective and the overworld map where you're pulled out of your travel for bandit attacks, traveling merchants, and a witch who just likes to mess with you. The low-detail art style works better from farther above than it does when you zoom in closer to ground level, but it's certainly not without its abstract charms when it comes to depicting the exaggerated features of creatures like werewolves, wraiths, and insect-infested zombies that move like The Last of Us's Clickers.

Dark Humor is one of many ways in which Weird West reminds me of my fondness for the classic Fallout 2.

Each of the five characters you'll inhabit has their own vignette story that can be as short as a handful of hours or, if you take your time like me, an average of eight a piece. We begin with Jane the Bounty Hunter tracking down her abducted husband, followed by a forcibly mutated pigman searching for the truth about who he used to be, a Protector of the Lost Fire Tribe battling a greed demon, a werewolf who is prophesized to lead his people in a battle for survival, and finally a cult member. They all take place on the same large, dense overworld map of a region known simply as "the West." And while there's not a ton of overlap between where their main quests lead them, they're all free to explore and revisit anywhere and anyone they like. Don't worry about the count of how many days you've spent – there's no time pressure to any of the stories.

The playable characters are largely defined by their sets of four class abilities, ranging from the bounty hunter's landmines to the pigman's poison trail and the werewolf's temporary invisibility. There's also a universal set of useful weapon skills like electric pistol bullets, silenced rifle shots, and stun arrows, but those must be leveled up for each character individually. However, a set of perks you unlock that remain persistent, and between that and a couple of shared loot stashes that means you're considerably more powerful in the fifth act than in the first thanks enhancements like more health, doubled explosive damage, and faster stealth movement. That provides a sense of progression even as you reboot from one character to the next.

These irreplaceable companions can permanently die.

While it's kind of a bummer that you can't switch back to directly controlling a previous character if you miss their abilities, that's an understandable limitation when you consider how the story works as a sequence of events. You can, however, go back to their homes and recruit them as one of your two AI-controlled companions (and you'd be crazy not to, since they're powerful and you get their inventories back) but the AI doesn't use their abilities with the precision they need to be really useful in combination with your own. There's also an added tension from the fact that these irreplaceable companions can permanently die (unless you reload a quicksave), so they're more of a loss than the disposable mercenaries you can hire in that role when things go bad.

Another forgivable letdown is that none of the main characters are voiced – we only ever hear from the Sam Elliot-impersonating narrator, and the voices that play behind the text of everyone else's speech sounds like spooky whispers or if Bane from The Dark Knight Rises was a Sim. But their personalities come across in the writing when you interact with them, and we're given plenty of opportunities to define them for ourselves with choices about who to help and who to harm.

When the action begins, gunfights with more than a couple of adversaries get hectic quickly because everybody moves pretty fast and the lead flies faster. Weird West is effectively a twin-stick shooter, and rapidly aiming and firing while managing your lengthy reload times for your revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and bow and arrow is a tall order. However, there's a slow-motion button that takes the twitch reactions out of fights (except for the reaction required to push that button); with this activated, the real challenge becomes managing the amount of time it takes to swing your gun from one target to the next – it's not instant – and of course, timing your special abilities for maximum effectiveness.

At normal speed, everybody moves pretty fast and the lead flies faster.

Also, slow-mo will automatically activate when you initiate a cinematic dive move, which eats some of your precious Action Point bar that's consumed by your abilities, but is extremely worth it because of how much damage you can put out. You get extra bullets in your gun and can fire rapidly, so anything short of a boss-level character will usually melt under a satisfying hail of bullets before you hit the ground.

Pros will know to do this before a fight breaks out, but I relied on slow-mo to give me the time I needed to really take advantage of the environment. Weird West is as much an immersive sim as it is an action game (which makes sense, considering Wolfeye was founded by Raphael Colantonio, who previously founded Arkane Studios, known for Dishonored and Prey) so you can expect plenty of opportunities for physics-based antics. Throw a lit oil lamp into a field and watch the firestorm that ensues; water (including rain) puts out the fire, while wind makes it spread faster. Touching arrows to a flame makes them into fire arrows, while dipping them in poison does exactly what you'd expect. Electricity plus water is another good one to remember. There's a lot of room to experiment here, and I love when a plan – or a completely accidental win – comes together.

Of course, there's no XP gained from killing in Weird West, so that means it's really an expedient means of acquiring loot as you go from point A to point B or defending yourself when you get caught where you shouldn't be. That's a wise design choice because it means that if you prefer to sneak through the whole thing, avoiding combat and pilfering the artifacts and golden playing cards that unlock new abilities you won't be missing out on much by way of progression. Also, it smartly takes the Last of Us approach to companions while you're in stealth, meaning they're simply invisible to enemies and you don't have to worry about them blowing your cover if the AI does something goofy.

Stealth is an exercise for the patient, so much of my first playthrough was done in a guns-blazing fashion, but every so often I'd see an opportunity to thin the herd; with a little timing (and perhaps some quick-loading) you can crough-walk from bandit to bandit, knocking them out and then picking up their unconscious bodies to toss them into a bush or behind a minecart while you deal with their friends. If they're dead you have the option to bury them if you have a shovel, so playing non-lethal stealth is slightly more of a self-imposed challenge. (Wolfeye says it's possible to get through the campaign without killing a human, but I was nowhere near pulling that off myself.)

People you've saved can randomly show up to assist you in tough fights later on.

There are plenty of people around the West in need of your assistance – the first act's villains are cannibals who round up people like cattle, after all – and beyond simply being a nice thing to do, a benefit of choosing to help the helpless is that the people you've saved can randomly show up to assist you in tough fights later on. That's a great reward for a good deed, serving as both a bonus and a reminder of recent adventures – it'll pop up with their name and why they're helping you, such as "You freed her husband from prison." The other side of that coin is that characters can form a vendetta against you if, for instance, they flee after you kill their boss or if you capture them alive to collect a bounty, and then they show up to make things a little tougher for you. I've even had significant characters show up as bounty targets after their role in the story was complete, which was a nice way to tie a little bow on their story.

All these overlapping systems mean Weird West is hardly glitch-free. I've seen moonwalking enemies, missing guns from hands, enemies suddenly detecting me when they shouldn't have, companions refusing to budge, taking hits to my reputation when I'd left no witnesses, a man self-immolating at a campfire, and more of those sorts of things. One time my character was taken to jail for a night and then… simply floated out of her cell and into the sky. But for a game with this many moving parts, that's to be expected to some degree – and considering the frequent autosaves (the last three of which are available to reload at any time), I never lost significant progress.

Over the course of my playthrough I spent a lot of my time gathering loot, whether it was picking over corpses, rifling through shelves and poorly guarded cash registers, mining ore, or digging up suspicious mounds of dirt to reveal treasure caches. There's stuff everywhere, and exploration is almost always generously rewarded. You also have the freedom to profit by unscrupulous means, such as robbing stores by breaking in at night, digging up graves, or just murdering people for fun (and stealing a horse for a quick getaway) at the cost of reputation which – just like you'd expect – gets a bounty placed on your head if it drops low enough.

Each tier of weapon simply does greater damage, without any other special effects.

That said, much of the actual equippable loot is a little disappointing: there are rarities of weapons, for instance, but each tier simply does greater damage without any other special effects, and no matter what armor or gear you equip you won't see any changes reflected in your character model. Additionally, there's no real crafting system aside from creating armor vests out of animal skins or using ore to upgrade weapons. That's fine, except that it makes all the other junk items you collect feel entirely like… well, junk, and the process of separating the wheat from the chaff becomes tiresome after a good while. It leads to lots of inventory management as you decide what to drop in favor of that shiny new item. Given how your companions act as pack mules I'd have liked an easier way to see who has what and move it between them than talking to one, accessing their inventory, moving it to yours, then talking to the other and moving it to theirs. (That's something I wasn't so fond of in Fallout 2.)

The larger story wraps up in an interesting way that makes your choices in the many life-or-death situations – and whether you just tried to do good or not – central to a high-stakes event rather than a showy boss battle. It's a good call and it serves Weird West well. If you're just charging through you might finish in 25 hours; I took closer to 40 by going off the main path to explore, collecting quite a few bounties, and seeing what the West had to offer. I was not disappointed.

I was excited to start a second playthrough (on hard mode this time) because at the end of each chapter you get a recap list of your decisions and achievements as that character, which looks like a substantial amount of relatively small changes can add up to a big difference. After all, who lives and who dies in a game where nearly everyone who isn't literally immortal can be killed can lead to some significantly different outcomes.

Only a few hours in, I've already found many things I missed on the first run. Instead of shaking down a local farmer for the deed to his land on behalf of a crime boss who had information I needed, I broke into his office by moving a barrel next to a wall and using it to reach the roof of the building next door, then jumping to a balcony and climbing in a window and breaking into his safe. I also stumbled upon a talking doll who asked me to help it break its curse, won a duel, found an amulet that gave my bullets a chance to set targets on fire, and more. (I could've used a lot more amulets like that on my first playthrough; most of the ones I got had bonuses so situational that I barely noticed I had them equipped.) This time I'm making greater use of Jane's ability to power up her kick, hilariously knocking enemies back and off of cliffs, and I intend to experiment with a lot more powers I overlooked the first time through.

There's a Marvel's Avengers Bug and The Only Fix Right Now Is to Delete Your Progress

Posted: 31 Mar 2022 04:14 AM PDT

It looks as though Marvel's Avengers has a game-breaking bug on PS5… and the only way to fix it right now is by deleting all your campaign progress.

According to player reports, the bug causes the game to crash every time you load it up, with many players claiming the game is currently unplayable as a result. The only fix, for now, is seemingly to reset campaign progress entirely:

"Our team is continuing to investigate the issue causing a crash for some PS5 players," developers announced via Twitter. "We think we've identified a fix that is currently being implemented/tested. We hope to have more news by tomorrow morning and will continue to keep you updated."

"In the meantime, here's a workaround that is resolving the issue for some players - just note that it will reset your campaign progress: Go to Operations and Reset your Reassemble Campaign Progress. As soon as you become young Kamala on A-Day, force close the game from the PS home screen, then you should be able to start Avengers Initiative."

This game-breaking bug comes at the worst possible time – during a double XP and resources week. Although the event should allow players to double their rewards between March 24 and March 31, it looks as though PS5 players have missed out on a large chunk of that.

Many are calling for the event to be extended.

This isn't the first controversy surrounding the game, either. Back last year, fans were in uproar when Marvel's Avengers added paid XP boosts following its move to Game Pass. Just weeks later, Crystal Dynamics removed the boosts from the in-game marketplace, issuing an apology to players.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
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