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aion-rsa · 4 years

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The Best Games of 2020

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Despite how almost every other aspect of the year went, 2020 was a landmark year for video games. Not only did it see the release of highly-anticipated titles like The Last of Us Part II, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Ghost of Tsushima, and Cyberpunk 2077, but 2020 also marked the beginning of a new generation of console and PC gaming with the release of the Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and new GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD. We even got a new Half-Life game this year!

What would’ve made the gaming year ever better? Big-name video game companies could have done more to eliminate development crunch and be more transparent about their business practices with customers and the press. And we definitely could have all been nicer to each other.

But video games also helped keep us connected when we couldn’t see our friends and loved ones in person. They helped us travel to new and interesting places when we couldn’t leave our homes. Most importantly, all 20 games on our best-of-the-year list made us feel excited about this medium at a time when it was so difficult to enjoy anything else.

To that affect, Den of Geek is celebrating 20 video games our contributors and critics, as well as our community of readers, voted as the very best of 2020.

20. Star Wars: Squadrons

For the last decade or so, most Star Wars games have focused on the power fantasy of being a lightsaber-swinging, Force-wielding Jedi. That’s all well and good, but for a long time it seemed like everyone forgot that some of the most beloved Star Wars games of all time were actually space shooters like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and Rogue Squadron. In many ways, Star Wars: Squadrons is a throwback to those games, both in terms of gameplay and design. Controls are a pitch perfect mix of arcade simplicity and strategy, requiring quick thinking about whether to focus your ship’s power on attacking or defending.

Squadrons is also much more tightly focused than other recent games from large publishers, with a breezy yet enjoyable single-player campaign, and a multiplayer mode that, while light on modes, eschews the more annoying modern conventions of the online PvP like invasive microtransactions. But Squadrons is not stuck in its old school ways.

If you have the hardware for it on PC or PS4, you can jump into the cockpit of any of the playable ships for one one of the most immersive VR modes around. Similar to how The Mandalorian has rejuvenated the live-action side of the Star Wars media empire, Squadrons is a perfect mix of all of the best things we’ve always loved about Star Wars video games, and everything we want them to be going forward. – CF

19. Journey to the Savage Planet

Science fiction writers have long held on to this idea that, if and when humankind eventually colonizes the universe, it will do so as some sort of united, utopian entity, like Starfleet. But that future seems less and less likely every day. If and when humanity spreads across the stars, it will likely be messy, absurd, and profit-motivated. Journey to the Savage Planet wallows in that type of future. As an unnamed human (or dog, if you choose), you’re dropped onto the planet AR-Y26 by Kindred, the fourth biggest intergalactic exploration company with the simple goal of collecting as many resources as possible and leaving.

The Metroidvania gameplay loop of crafting equipment to access new areas is compelling, a rarity for 3D games in the genre. And it offers plenty of surprises too. You’ll start off with the typical blaster and scanner before eventually unlocking a grappling hook that lets you swing around levels like Spider-Man. But it’s style that ultimately lifts Journey to the Savage Planet above so many other games released in 2020. For one thing, the world and the fauna you’ll encounter are incredibly unique, and well, alien. And the regular live-action updates from Kindred beamed directly to your ship are among some of the funniest and most bizarre cinematics out this year in any game, providing plenty of motivation to see this journey through to its end. – CF

18. Half-Life: Alyx

As VR gaming continues to evolve, it’s becoming clear that the technology is more than just one truly great game away from widespread adoption. If that were all it took, then Half-Life: Alyx would have put a VR set under a lot of Christmas trees.

It’s truly wild to think that we got a new Half-Life game this year and that it sometimes feels like the game’s release was barely a blip on the cultural radar. While its somewhat muted debut can be attributed to its VR exclusivity (and the fact it launched at the onset of a global health crisis), Half-Life: Alyx surpassed all possible hype by offering a truly incredibly narrative-driven adventure bolstered by some of the cleverest uses of VR technology that we’ve ever seen.

Half-Life: Alyx isn’t the first great VR game, but Valve’s glorious return to form does shows how VR can advance fundamental elements of gameplay and storytelling rather than just show familiar games from a new perspective. – MB

17. Carrion

The indie game space is where you typically see the most experimentation, and this year proved no different when the gruesome and morbid Carrion released back in July. Highly inspired by the likes of John Carpenter’s The Thing, Alien, and other cult classic horror films known for their excellent use of practical SFX, this platformer cleverly flips the script, putting you in the role of the monster to dispatch helpless scientists in the claustrophobic depths of an underground lab as an ever-growing amorphous blob creature. What follows is a brief but effective 2D platformer that is fast paced and delectably gory.

The controls could have made controlling the creature a real pain, but Phobia Game Studio recognized that the key here was letting you move swiftly through the levels. As such, gliding through vents to take down scientists from above or underneath quickly becomes second nature. Encounters still pose a good degree of challenge, however, thanks to the heavily armed soldiers that show up later in the game, but this never stops Carrion from fulfilling every horror aficionado’s devilish fantasy of being the bloodthirsty monster. – AP

16. Kentucky Route Zero

Calling Kentucky Route Zero an homage to classic point-and-click adventure games is technically correct, but it doesn’t come close to doing the experience justice. Kentucky Route Zero is more like a poem or fable in video game form. It’s a feeling, a distillation of what it’s like to come of age in the Great Recession and its fallout over the last decade. Kentucky Route Zero is an epithet for rural America told through a fever dream, an examination of a version of rural Appalachia where talking skeletons and robotic musicians live alongside gas station attendants and truck drivers.

Nothing about Kentucky Route Zero fits the typical confines of what we expect from a video game, and that includes its release. Developed by a team of only three, the first episode of the five-episode experience was released in 2013, but the final product was only realized in early 2020. That lengthy development cycle meant that the game’s scope and story could grow to only better encapsulate this moment in time, and the final product stands out as one of best games of the year. To say more is to spoil its excellent story. – CF

15. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2

Though it’s been a hot minute since skateboarding games dominated the console space, Vicarious Visions’ excellent remake collection of the first two Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles was a reminder of how the entire series captured a whole generation of players in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Whether it’s grinding down rails, performing kickflips, or landing the gravity-defying 1080 on a vert ramp, everything in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 feels and looks exactly as you remember it but touched up with modern flare. That’s the mark of any great remake, and why this game in particular was the best example of the practice this year.

Classic skating locations like Warehouse, School and Downtown have all been faithfully remade from the ground up for a 21st century audience, effortlessly delivering the same thrills and balanced challenge as they did before. The fact that select mechanical features like reverts, which wouldn’t arrive until later entries, have been retroactively added is also a nice touch, instantly making Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 the definitive way to experience these skateboarding classics. – AP

14. Ori and the Will of the Wisps

The fact that Ori and the Will of the Wisps managed to usurp the critically acclaimed 2015 original in most design aspects speaks to just how well Moon Studios has mastered the art of the Metroidvania. Whisking players off on another tight 10-hour journey set within a mystical forest full of secrets to discover, this 2D adventure gives off a fantastical vibe in a way few others do. It’s an expert blend between smart combat mechanics, highly polished platforming, and emotional storytelling. That it runs at a silky 60 fps both on Nintendo Switch and Xbox is the cherry on top.

The major improvements Will of the Wisps makes over Blind Forest relate to saving and combat. Whereas previously it was the responsibility of players to lay down specific checkpoints, progress is now more in line with other 2D platformers and less punishing. Combat, meanwhile, has been completely revamped with the inclusion of special charms and upgradeable skills, most of which result in more flexible enemy encounters. These tweaks are implemented without ever compromising on Ori’s core hook of magical exploration and challenging platforming, instantly making it one of the best Metroidvanias out there. – AP

13. Call of Duty: Warzone

Call of Duty: Warzone was a natural and perhaps even necessary evolution for the long-running shooter franchise, carving out a space for it in the ever-crowding battle royale genre. While it’s largely derivative of battle royale titles that came before, the staggering 150-player count, always excellent CoD controls, top-notch presentation, and flexible cash system have made it eminently popular and fun for casual players and series vets alike. The CoD fan base feels vibrant again after years of stagnation in the shadow of breakout titles like PUBG and Fortnite, and that’s without going into how Warzone has revitalized the franchise’s presence in the streaming space.

One of the best facets of the game’s design is that the large player count all but ensures that, even if a player is new to the genre or series, the chances of them being the absolute worst player in the field is very low. Better still, the “Gulag” respawn mechanic opens up the possibility for ultimate revenge should you earn your way back into the match, which is a nice way to up engagement for those who suffer disappointing deaths.

The game doesn’t feel quite as dynamic or high-stakes as some of its competitors on the market, but it’s definitely one of the easiest to pick up and play. It’s no wonder Warzone has expanded CoD’s already enormous audience over the course of 2020. – BB

12. Astro’s Playroom

With launch lineups mostly filled with graphically enhanced releases of last-gen games, the release of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X has been more than a little underwhelming. The one bright spot is Astro’s Playroom, a little first-party Sony game that received virtually no pre-release hype and comes pre-installed on every PS5.

While at first glance a typical 3D platformer, Astro’s Playroom soon reveals itself to be a fantastic showcase of what’s possible with the new DualSense controller. In one level, you’re feeling the resistance from the controller’s adaptive triggers as you spring jump through obstacles dressed as a frog. In another, you’re expertly moving the controller back and forth to climb walls in a robotic monkey suit. Even just standing in the rain causes the controller to pulse ever so slightly with each drop. And all of this takes place across worlds celebrating the entire history of PlayStation, where you collect classic consoles and accessories, culminating in an unexpected boss battle throwback to an original PSX tech demo.

Astro’s Playroom may be short, but it’s an oh so sweet and exciting taste of what’s possible with the power of next-gen consoles. – CF

11. Doom Eternal

It would have been easy for Doom Eternal to be more of the same. After all, 2016’s Doom became the surprising gold-standard for single-player FPS games by virtue of its clever writing and gameplay that blended the best of classic and modern design concepts. Yet, Doom Eternal proved to be something much more than “the same but bigger.”

With its arena-like levels and resource management mechanics, Doom Eternal sometimes feels like a puzzle game set in the Doom universe. While the transition to this new style can be jarring, you soon find that Doom Eternal is speaking the same language in a different dialect. The brutal brilliance of a classic Doom game remains but it’s presented in the form of a kind of FPS dance that puts you in a state of pure zen once you figure out how to make that perfect run through a room full of demonic baddies.

Four years after Doom showed this old franchise could pull off new tricks, Doom Eternal proves that this series is at the forefront of FPS innovation once more. – MB

10. Demon’s Souls

Although initially released in 2009 for the PlayStation 3, Demon’s Souls would help define the next generation of gaming by establishing the Soulslike genre, which has influenced everything from recent Star Wars games to The Legend of Zelda. The “problem” is that the legacy of Demon’s Souls has been sort of eclipsed by the accomplishments of its successors.

That’s the beauty of the remake for the PS5. Aided by the power of the console’s next-gen hardware, developer Bluepoint Games pays homage to one of the most historically significant games of the last 15 years while wisely updating it in ways that show that the foundation of FromSoftware’s breakthrough hit remains arguably the best entry in a genre that isn’t exactly lacking in modern classics.

In a year where finding a next-gen console proved to be more difficult than any Soulslike game, Demon’s Souls remains the best reason to battle the bots at online stores in the hopes of joining gaming’s next generation as soon as possible. – MB

9. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

There were multiple times this year where couped-up players relied heavily on “bean” games to help maintain a human connection. Before Among Us dominated the Twitch streams, it was Mediatonic’s intentionally clumsy and hilarious Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout that had us competitively raging with our friends. It did so by merging the wildly popular battle royale genre with the inflatable-fueled antics of early ’90s game shows, where dodging swinging hammers and battling giant fruit against 59 others became the norm for a few weeks – all in the pursuit of winning a highly coveted crown.

Needless to say, making Fall Guys free to PS Plus subscribers for a month turned out to be a genius marketing move, urging everyone to hop into the game’s inventive gamut of levels and make a fool of themselves. Much of what sets it apart from other battle royale attempts is its low-skill barrier to entry, and thanks to frequent seasonal updates, new unlockable outfits and fresh mini-games always being added, bumbling to the top of the pack as a colorful bean remains consistent fun. – AP

8. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Animal Crossing: New Horizons should be included in history books about the Covid-19 pandemic. Releasing just as lockdowns were being instituted across the globe, New Horizons provided the escapism we so desperately needed while quarantining, attracting not just the usual Nintendo fanbase, but even those who had never played games in the past but were now looking for something to occupy their time at home. Whether we played it with friends or alone, New Horizons provided the routine and distraction that so many of us needed in a world suddenly thrown into chaos.

Of course, it helped that New Horizons is the best Animal Crossing game to date, with tons of new ways to customize your island (and yourself). And as Covid-19 restrictions have stretched much longer than many of us anticipated, New Horizons has kept pace, with Nintendo releasing a steady stream of new fish to catch, fruits to harvest, and events to participate in throughout the year. It may not be the game that everyone wanted, but New Horizons is the game that 2020 needed. – CF

7. Cyberpunk 2077

When Cyberpunk 2077’s legacy is written, there’s no doubt that the opening chapter is going to focus on the bugs, technical shortcomings, and empty promises that have turned what looked to be one of 2020’s guaranteed hits into one of modern gaming’s most debated debuts.

Yet, the reason that this game’s initial issues will likely not ultimately define it is that Cyberpunk 2077 reveals itself to be a special experience whenever you’re able to play it without crashes or bugs ruining your experience. From its stunning side quests that revive one of The Witcher 3’s best elements to its shockingly human narrative, Cyberpunk 2077 regularly showcases the undeniable talent of the individuals who battled internal and external factors to deliver their vision.

Cyberpunk 2077’s technical problems wouldn’t hurt as much as they do if there wasn’t a truly great game at the heart of them that people are begging to be able to play as intended. – MB

6. Final Fantasy VII Remake

The pressure was on for Square Enix from the moment it announced Final Fantasy VII Remake back in 2015. For those who obsessed over the original back in 1997, the prospect of a remake was the stuff dreams were made of, and this year we finally got to relive Cloud, Aerith, Barret, and Tifa’s grand adventure (the first act of it, at least) with fully updated, well, everything. Astonishingly, the remake actually lived up to expectations and delivered not just a faithful update to the original game but a modern RPG that stands as one of its generation’s best regardless of nostalgia.

The key to Square Enix’s success was its approach, which aimed not to duplicate the experience of the original game, but to capture the essence and spirit of it while using modern game design to deliver the story in a way that doesn’t feel retro or rehashed at all. The game looks dazzling by 2020 standards (Midgar never looked better) but doesn’t compromise the integrity of the original designs, and the real-time combat—arguably the biggest departure from the original—is a blast to play.

Time will tell how exactly Square Enix will follow through with the rest of the remake as we enter a new console generation, but in the meantime, they studio has left us with a terrific reimagining of the most celebrated title in the studio’s expansive oeuvre. – BB

5. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Ubisoft deserves credit for keeping a franchise like Assassin’s Creed, which is 13 years old at this point, thriving in an industry that is flooded with more open world games now than it ever has been. The series is always competitive in the genre, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla proves why: it’s as refined as any of its predecessors and delivers a balanced experience with a rich world to explore, tons of strange stories to uncover, and a mash-up milieu that combines the eerie atmosphere of 5th-century England with the otherworldly spectacle of Norse mythology.

No open world game is perfect, and Valhalla certainly has a handful of shortcomings. But it’s a bloody good time to play, and there’s so much to do that there’s no question that you get your money’s worth. Eivor’s quest for glory and domination is also arguably the most cinematic story in the entire AC catalog, with some truly breathtaking cutscenes that rival those found in more linear games that can’t sniff Valhalla’s scope. Some of the more otherworldly moments in the back half of the game are pure, unadulterated, nonsensical fun, and overall, this is one of the best entries in the series. – BB

4. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Insomniac is one of those studios that you can always rely on to deliver fun, polished games that shine in every category, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales only adds to the team’s sterling reputation. Building on the already brilliant formula the studio created with the original Marvel’s Spider-Man, Miles’s story is one of loss, friendship, identity, and the strength of the Black and Hispanic communities of Harlem.

The side-quel is also one of the best launch titles arguably ever. While it is a cross-gen game, the PS5 version is currently the best showcase of what next-gen gaming is capable of from a visual and performance standpoint. You won’t find a better-looking New York City in any other video game, period, and Insomniac’s outstanding animation work looks insanely good when bolstered by the PS5’s considerable horsepower. Miles plays differently than Peter Parker did in the original game as well, with his Venom Powers giving enemy encounters a new feel and rhythm.

Insomniac outdid itself with an excellent follow-up that would’ve been a forgettable DLC expansion in the hands of a less ambitious studio. But Miles Morales is one of the best modern-day superhero characters ever created, and it’s only right that he get a game that lives up to his greatness. – BB

3. Hades

The popularity of roguelikes has been calmly bubbling up for years now, yet only in 2020 did it truly become mainstream thanks to an ideal balance between gameplay and story as demonstrated by Hades. Players who previously took umbrage with the genre’s nature to wipe out all progress at each run’s end suddenly had a reason to jump back in, now inspired by Zagreus’ various tries to escape hell and overthrow his eponymous father. This alone sees Hades tower over most of its peers in terms of balance, further backed up by rewarding gameplay and a gorgeous comic book art style that makes the well-worn mythological Greek milieu feel fresh.

Developer Supergiant Games proved its penchant for creating flexible mechanical loops in prior titles, and in many ways, Hades feels like a culmination of all those ideas distilled in one neat package. It’s a great example of semi-randomized systems layering perfectly on top of other systems, until players eventually find themselves completing runs using distinct weapons, upgrading persistent abilities and slowly discovering which of the god’s many boons gel best with one another. Hades is always a hellishly good time. – AP

2. Ghost of Tsushima

The concept of honor has never been explored in a game as lyrically and philosophically as it is in Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch’s story-driven samurai epic. Jin Sakai’s grand adventure is both brutal and beautiful, stretching across the grasslands and snowy peaks of the titular island, as he pushes the oppressive Mongol army out of his homeland, all the while wrestling internally with the kind of man, warrior, and leader he ultimately wants to be.

This game is outstanding on so many fronts that it’s difficult to list them all here. Visually, it looks so stunning that anyone who walks past your TV as you play is all but guaranteed to stop and stare for a while. The combat is fast and challenging, the stealth mechanic is on-point, the score is sweeping and sentimental, the character models are incredibly realistic, the online multiplayer mode “Legends” is actually a blast to play…and the list goes on. This poetic, pitch-perfect modern masterpiece is emblematic of the soulful, cinematic storytelling PlayStation Studios is known for, and it’s a wonderful way to send the PS4 off into the sunset. – BB

1. The Last of Us Part II (Also Reader’s Choice)

You can’t even say the name of our 2020 game of the year without sparking numerous debates that often make it nearly impossible to have a productive conversation about the game itself. That makes it that much more tempting to somehow find a kind of middle-ground that will “justify” the game’s lofty position to everyone regardless of where they stand.

The thing about The Last of Us Part 2,though, is that its divisiveness is very much part of the experience. Naughty Dog’s follow-up to arguably its greatest game is a bold attempt to live up to the franchise’s legacy by furthering what came before while trying to find its own way. Much like Ellie herself, The Last of Us Part 2 doesn’t always make the right decisions. Yet, at a time when bigger budgets are seen as an excuse to play it safe, The Last of Us Part 2 impresses through its willingness to present a big, bold, and personal adventure that is often anything but what was expected.

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Anyone can generate a little controversy by saying something stupid, offensive, or hurtful. The beauty of The Last of Us Part 2’s controversy is that it stems from a heartfelt attempt to advance the conversation through indie-like passion and big budget production. – MB

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tezsaltblogsrhpc · 6 years

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I Lost Track Because I Was So Mad: Nemesia Nonsense Marathon From Hell (Part 2)

As I redo the popemobile fight because I forgot to charge my 3DS and it died, I find myself pondering how weird it's always seemed to me that healing spells in RH don't actually increase in power with the caster's magic stat. Area G-Heal heals 150 HP whether it's Eruca with Freikugel Mercy and 3 Thauma Charms casting it or Marco with a sword with no magic bonus. This is so weird to me that sometimes I forget it and have to load up an old save file and test to remind myself.

Anyway, last time we left off, something really, really profoundly stupid was about to happen.

"(If the core is at all relevant, it must have something to do with Noah himself.)" Don't we all love magic plot intuition based on absolutely nothing? This is still a thing the original is guilty of, and it's still a thing I don't like.

"(But back in my world, Noah has been dead for a few years…)" You don't actually know when he died, dude. It could be anytime in the last five years. Even with player knowledge, he could theoretically even still have been alive at the beginning of AH; hell, he could genuinely have written the melted snow speech.

"Hold on... I assumed he was dead after seeing that doll... but I never actually saw his body. Is it possible that Noah is still alive?"

"That would explain Noah's words in that other potential world." PC has not stopped thinking its players are morons in the last ten seconds.

Nemesia: "The question now is who to show the core he gave you." Stocke: "It has to be Hugo."

Because it's not like Stocke knows anyone else it would make much more sense to show a mysterious piece of medical thaumatech to!

"He's the one who was hiding the truth about Noah from the people of Alistel." Because that's totally an argument for having a conversation about it with him.

"Good idea." No, it isn't.

Anyway, now that I'm free of the cutscenes, I can check out the ~Gopherwood Ring~ I stole off the popemobile. It is "shaped like an ark," in case you hadn't gotten the thematically incoherent reference yet, and is basically an upgrade from Viola's Vesper Ring.

(That name, for the record, is a thematically coherent reference: Vesper is the Roman form of Hesperus, a.k.a. the planet Venus as the Evening Star. Hugo has the Venus Ring. The other aspect of Venus is the Morning Star, a.k.a. Phosphorus, which translates to “bearer of light,” so the Roman name for it is...)

Before I go any farther, I want to point something out:

Hugo would, presumably, have to be keeping Noah's body either in wherever they claim Noah's chambers are or somewhere deep in the supervillain lair under the castle. In both cases, Raul's troops would have thoroughly swept them. Nobody wants to be surprised by a berserk thautomaton or a rogue squadron of crazed, half-starved brainwashed soldiers who have no idea the war is over; hell, there would have been people trying to find Noah's body specifically, so they could give him a funeral. And there were researchers down there who clearly had no idea what was going on when Stocke broke in; a lot of them would probably spill the beans on every secret project they could remember if they thought it would save their skins.

Even if Raul's men missed wherever Hugo hid the pod on the first sweep, Noah's body has supposedly been perfectly fine in suspended animation for several years. There's no time crunch, even for Stocke; there's days at a minimum and maybe even weeks between taking back Alistel and when he goes back to Granorg.

Literally the only thing Hugo might maybe be necessary for is to get the location of Noah's body out of him, and that's assuming it was hidden well enough that all those people looking didn't find it and there were no scientists or engineers involved in constructing or maintaining the suspended animation system who know where it is. (Even Fennel is more trustworthy and more likely to spill the beans than Hugo, especially if it means he gets to show off his cool thing.) And there's a hell of a lot of reason to try anything else first: Hugo has a long history of lying and backstabbing, hates Stocke personally, has plenty of practical reason to prefer Noah out of the way, seems completely out of his gourd at the only time Stocke can ask him that wouldn't torpedo the timeline, and is generally about as trustworthy as a chocolate frying pan.

By far a simpler and more logical option would be to tell Raul that he found out from Mysterious Specint Sources that there was a project to preserve Noah's body before his death so he could be revived with better medical care and to be on the lookout for it, then pass the ~core~ off to Sonja.

The only reason for what we are about to do is Because The Plot Says So.

...Oh, and the item description on Noah's pacemaker is "The core of Noah's body, made with the best of Flux technology.", because the PC devs earnestly wanted to validate my snarking last time about its name and remind me that they didn't bother to learn what this game's worldbuilding terms mean, I guess.

Oops: 93

...AAAND I just saw that this quest was in continuity with the previous Noah quest.

The one that ended with HUGO BEING ARRESTED.

I guess I shouldn't expect it to remember how the original story works when it can't even remember what happens in its own.

Oops: 94

...Jeez, that opens up sooo many new plot holes. Besides the fact that Hugo is somehow free to hang around in the basement when he was arrested, how does the supervillain lair exist at all if Noah was alive, in charge, and not heavily funding thaumatech? Have Hugo and Fennel been embezzling on an unspeakably massive scale? Not only that, Noah died extremely publicly, in the middle of the castle courtyard: just how bad was Raul's security on the body of a dead head of state that Fennel could run off with it?

"(Should I show Hugo the core I got from Noah?)" As I just explained at length, absolutely not, but we're going to have to do it anyway.

"(I should show Hugo the core and find out if Noah is really still alive.)" No you should not, and I'd like to register yet another complaint about PC constantly explaining exactly what is going on to you in excruciating literalness in case you are an idiot.

"(I should find out how Hugo reacts when he sees the core Noah entrusted to me.)" This is astonishingly bad decision-point writing.

"(I can't discount the possibility that Noah is still alive, even if no one has seen him lately.)"

I literally stopped and stared off into space for five minutes at this point because I could not put words around my reaction to this phrasing of this sentiment. I eventually gave up because everything about this line is repugnant to me.

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 22

And Stocke saying that Noah is alive magically makes Hugo stop being glowing-eyes and I hate PC.

Raynie: "Wait, if Noah's still alive, how has Hugo been doing all this!?" Stocke: "Noah's health has presumably deteriorated to a point where he can no longer appear in public."

… Zombie Noah on a backflipping tricycle.

1) PC's own questline claims that... basically every single bad thing Hugo did still happened when Noah was in charge. The answer to Raynie's question is apparently, "Noah wouldn't have stopped it even if he was around to do so."

2) We are now having Stocke literally parrot exactly what Hugo's official announcements have been saying for years and having people act like this is a surprising deduction.

3) I want to direct you to some of Raynie's dialogue from SH Chapter freaking One:

But please, tell me how she'd be ~so surprised~ that Hugo could do Hugo things without Noah stopping him.

4) Yet another point in PC's tally of "thing that if people knew all along the plot would have fallen apart, treated like people knew it all along."

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 23

"This will help Noah recover... right?" How the hell would Hugo know? He's not a thaumatech engineer, he's a politician.

Hugo: "That's- No, that's impossible! Where did you get that?" Stocke: "Someone trusted me to see it safely into your hands."

Noah's ghost: "oOoOoOo... Actually, I meant for you to hand it to Sonja to improve the lives of ordinary people because I'm fucking ninety and even if I recovered I could have an aneurysm any day... I had a DNR order on file... Maybe I should have been a little clearer about that... oOoOoOo..."

Seriously, though, they're not even trying to give any reason at all that Stocke would trust Hugo, even though they even led into this event with Nemesia telling Stocke not to let down his guard. He's just suddenly civil and respectful to this asshole who lied to an entire nation for years to usurp power, tried to commit genocide, conspired with the enemy to try to kill Rosch, framed Rosch for treason when that didn't work, deliberately got a bunch of nearly-green recruits killed (and Kiel cannot have possibly been out of his teens), ordered the creation and deployment of a superweapon that killed thousands of people and probably did untold amounts of environmental damage, and IN THIS SCENE tried to trick him into a position of vulnerability to murder all his friends. If you walk around Alistel when you get access to the lab, NPCs will tell you that people in Alistel no longer leave their homes because they're so scared of Hugo.

I've said it before and I'll almost certainly say it again: the farther I get into PC, the more convinced I become that it was written based on a plot summary by people who hadn't played the game. Because the thought process that led to this mess might almost make sense if it was. If all you have is a list of events, how deeply Hugo has his fingers in every bad thing Alistel does probably doesn't stand out. And you certainly don't have the emotional connection to hate him. And aww, look, it says he dies smiling and talking about Noah, he Really Cared <3.

This is so infuriating it's genuinely hard to keep going.

I'm going to turn the sound off and just hope this goddamn scene ends soon.

"The Prophet's mechanical body has been malfunctioning for years. Therefore, I asked Fennel to preserve him in a state of suspended animation." PC absolutely does not understand the flavor that original!RH's magitech has- clunky, bulky, unsubtle and heavily mechanical, rough and unnatural where it applies to living people- but that's old news and the least of its sins at this point.

Stocke: "Fennel, but he…" Hugo: *sadface* "That's right. I killed him."

My heart bleeds for you. -_-

Hugo: "Without Fennel, the core is useless."

I hate PC.

"God, what have I done?" I hate PC.

And then of course Fennel just trundles in, because this is PC and death is cheap and no obstacle can last longer than about ten seconds.

"I predicted that once Historica was used on you, you'd lose your already feeble mind and attack. I was quite right to install an auxiliary power source and an auto-repair program within me." I HATE PC.

"I sincerely apologize for that. Please forgive me." So, like, are we going to get an apology for the war crimes and genocide? Please, explain to this nine-year-old child why you told everyone she was an abomination who had to be purged from the earth. She's waiting. She has knives. She can get a piggyback ride from the guy whose entire command you got killed because you were paranoid he'd be a political threat if you'd rather speak to her at closer to eye level.

"Well, staring at your bald head is getting boring." It got boring about four Nemesia quests ago.

"In the hidden room next door, sleeping." ...PC doesn't actually know what "suspended animation" means, does it.

"Reviving him will be a delicate process, so stay put. You with the core, though, come with us." Note: Historica has not activated. There is no indication that Hugo has lost his Flux powers. Two villains are asking Stocke to come with them alone into another room, carrying a valuable plot coupon, and one of those villains is know for doing stuff like, oh, offering an armistice and then doing this:

I. Hate. PC.

And of course they didn't make a new map, they just recycled Fennel's lab and Noah is just lying on the slab where there's usually a thaumachine.

"What in the- This is different from the core I know!" WHY IS THIS A SURPRISE WHEN THE CORE YOU KNOW IS INSIDE NOAH'S BODY. IF IT WASN'T DIFFERENT, THERE WOULD BE NO POINT TO THIS.

"Oho! A fusion with the structure of a thaumachine's core unit? What a quantum way of thinking!" *muffled screaming into a pillow because WORDS MEAN THINGS, and YES, that includes the word "quantum"*

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 24

"With new specs like these, overcoming the design flaws will be child's play!" My previous observations about how vanilla!Fennel is an actual researcher who needs time and resources and data and PC!Fennel can just magic up anything the plot demands on the spot with no prep time stand. Also, I don't think the writer knows what "specs" means.

"Truly!? Then we shall be blessed to see the Prophet restored to his former glory!" I'm positively overcome with joy. -_-

"But was the one who made it a genius... or a madman? Such a bold attempt couldn't have been made without putting Noah's life in danger." This scene is taking forever for me to get through because I keep stopping to bury my face in my hands. There's just. So much stupid to unpack crammed into lines like this. No such thing as a prototype, no such thing as testing (even though we have canonical proof that Fennel is 100% down with unethical human experimentation), and Fennel for some reason assumes that this thing was made for and connected to Noah even though THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE, because Stocke has it and Noah has been down here for years and IS still down here and IT IS NOT IN HIS BODY.

And, in typical PC fashion, Fennel says it can't save Noah and then immediately says he can totally revive Noah because he has it, and I hate PC.

"I can't tell you how long I've waited for this day to arrive."

"I prepared for it by pretending to be you for years, making us the most unpopular people on the continent, arranging the deaths of any and all promising up-and-coming officers, crippling the government, and botching a campaign of imperialism and genocide so badly that Alistel is now being held by a coalition of forces from every other country on the continent and most of our army has surrendered or deserted!"

"Much has happened while I slumbered, it seems. Perhaps it would be for the best if the public believed me dead." Because we wouldn't want to actually have Noah contribute anything to the narrative or in any way react to any of the horrible things that were done in his name! Why would we care about that!

"Alistel is on the cusp of being born anew... I do not want the past to hold back the future." Because it's not like the people of Alistel deserve to know the truth of what's been going on in their country!

"I've decided to follow Noah wherever he may go. There's nothing left for me here." ...How about a war crimes trial, because we have a multinational army here specifically to drag you out of your hole and hold you accountable for your atrocities, you sack of crusty dildos?

"Let the records state that I died alongside the Prophet."

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 25

"I'll say the revival failed, and Hugo committed suicide to join Noah beyond the veil of death."

...

......

I am incandescent with rage right now.

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 26

To put that sentiment in Stocke's mouth. At this point. Knowing who he is.

If I had played PC first, I probably would have started actively hating him here.

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 27

...Fuck it. I’m declaring that the way Nemesia is brainwashing Stocke is through the activation of the ~prism~, and the reason it went off three times in that last quest was because she needed to crush his will as much as possible because that was the only way to get him to go along with what she wanted. Which is Hugo alive, because those Flux powers he stole from Historica will be delicious when she devours him.

Nyarlamesia: 52

And they repeated that stupid "son of possibility" crap from one of the Nemesia quests because of course they did.

"When the Snow Melts" has been added to the White Chronicle.

...Wow, that's just. The cherry on top, isn't it. They really, fundamentally did not understand what the melted snow speech was about, did they.

Fennel: "I'm still going to continue my research, for your information." Stocke: "Of course. Do as you will."

...You mean the federally-funded research that Fennel absolutely cannot do without governmental support that Stocke is in no position to provide?

...And, of course, they don't even bother to change Lippti's line, "Hugo and Protea have been slain."

Oops: 95

We just let a lying, manipulative, delusional, genocidal, perpetually power-grubbing bastard WHO STILL HAS INVINCIBLE TIME POWERS go for literally no reason.

In short:

Tally:

Why was this changed? 476

Changes I Don’t Hate: 223

Poor choice of expressions/voice clips/sound effects: 125

Oops: 95

How Do I Art: 76

Nyarlamesia: 52

Annoying Sound Effects: 43

Handy-dandy gameplay changes: 29

FUCK YOU AND THE HELL SPIDER YOU RODE IN ON: 27

Great budget priorities: 22

The monkey's paw is flipping me off: 15

Let Stocke Say Ass: 12

Save Me From Fanservice: 8

#gameblogging #this was excruciating

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blazehedgehog · 7 years

Note

Do you have any opinions on Star Wars? (Games, comics, movies, shows, etc.)

This is a very broad question, so I hope you’re prepared for a broad response. By which I mean: yo this post is going to be long.

Star Wars is pretty cool, I guess. I’ve seen A New Hope a lot.

I remember the same day the trailer for The Phantom Menace dropped, they installed iMac G3s in our high school computer lab. That was probably the first thing any of us did on one of those, was watch it, back when apple.com used to not only host, but premiere movie trailers in Quicktime format.

I remember getting swept up in that zeitgeist, about how amazing it was going to be, and hearing reviews slam it. I never saw it in the theater, because I never see movies in theaters (even back then). I remember renting it on VHS and finding it tremendously boring. Way too many hard-to-follow politics.

I saw Attack of The Clones in theaters, because my Mom and I had four free movie tickets from some giveaway. So we saw Clones and the first Sam Raimi Spider-man. For the longest time, those were the last two movies I saw in theaters (up until a couple years ago, when my cousin took me to see Pacific Rim, and then most recently, my brother took all of us to see Cars 3). I remember on the way in seeing a friend from High School in the lobby playing the theater’s Marvel vs. Capcom cabinet. I dropped a quarter in and he mopped the floor with me.

Clones seemed fine when I was coming out of the theater. Going to the theater felt like a special event (because it was), so I don’t think the movie itself even really sunk in until I tried watching it a second time a year later, on home video – I found it to be one of the worst movies I’d ever seen, at that point in time. Just, absolutely awful. An embarrassment if there ever was one.

I saw Revenge of the Sith on video about a year after its release and thought it was the most watchable movie in the prequel trilogy. I have not seen it again since.

I did not really grow up with Star Wars video games. I remember renting the Super Star Wars trilogy and never liking any of them. Way too unforgivably difficult and genuinely kind of ugly games, too. People will go on about Factor 5′s big downfall being Lair for the PS3, but in all honesty I’ve never played a Factor 5 game I’ve enjoyed. Their Star Wars games in particular.

Yes, that even means all of the Rogue Squadron games. I’ve played the (first?) Nintendo 64 game, which quickly shoves an escort mission in your face (the worst). The second Gamecube game I ever owned was Rogue Squadron 2, bought for $2 in around 2005. Very visually impressive, but again, the mission variety and the extreme level of difficulty drags things down. Not very fun.

I have fond memories of the demo for Jedi Outcast, but I would later come to realize those find memories weren’t from playing the game normally – I would enable cheats, jack all my force powers up to max and goof around, shoving storm troopers off of ledges and spawning The Reborn and having saber duels with them in rooms that weren’t built for those kinds of fights.

My real fond memories are of the first Jedi Knight game (Dark Forces 2), which I forced my mom to buy for me when we ditched our 266mhz Packard Bell for a 1.5ghz Sony Vaio. I wanted to “test the system’s capabilities,” even though the game was 4-5 years old at that point. My “memories” of Jedi Knight are of having fun, but I don’t actually remember many specifics, except a level with a lot of water and a lot of mynocks.

Many years later, when I bought Jedi Outcast on Steam, I found it, too, to be insanely frustrating. The entire lead up to that game before you get your saber is awful, especially the level with all the rodian snipers. One of those old-style PC games where you’re expected to savescum your way through everything, with two fingers perched on the quicksave and quickload keys at all times. Even once I started cheating, much as I did with the Outcast demo, it failed to hold my interest – it eventually degenerates in to awful platforming levels with controls ill-suited to such a task.

I’ve never touched a KOTOR, despite owning both on Steam now. I know they’re high regarded, and I bought them with the intent on playing them eventually, but it just never happened.

The secret best Star Wars game is probably Revenge of the Sith on the Nintendo DS. It’s by Ubisoft and I think Gameloft, which usually is a bad combination. It’s a Turtles in Time-style beat’em’up with the occasional 3D shooter section. It’s generic and kind of forgettable, but also way better than it has any right to be. There’s a version of the same game on the GBA, but it’s missing the 3D shooter stuff and a few other bonus features the DS version gets.

The only other Star Wars game I remember enjoying is the Podracer game, but that took a long time to click with me. It’s one of those games that I think really benefits from an instruction manual, or watching someone else play, or something. I think specifically what got the game to click with me was watching World Record runs on Youtube.

youtube

Realizing that game has a boost system and heat management really gave it a sort of depth I didn’t think it had. And don’t underestimate how easy it looks in this video, actually juggling the cycle of overheating, repairing, and boosting while also steering is a LOT harder than you’d think. But it’s completely necessary – despite being a podracing game, it’s not normally anywhere near as fast as it’s depicted in the movie… unless you know how to ride the line like these guys. :p

I’d go for a new, modern Podracer game. I’m also aware the Arcade/Dreamcast version is a completely different game. Never tried it.

Saw The Force Awakens when it released on DVD, thought it was alright. A little safe, but it was significantly better than the prequels. A solid Star Wars movie, just not outstanding. I have a lot of friends who have grown bitter about how derivative it is, but not me. (I also have only ever watched it once.)

I have not yet seen The Last Jedi, and probably won’t until it reaches home video. I’ve been avoiding spoilers as best I can, but at the very least, I know it’s a very divisive movie and I can make some assumptions as to why, based on the ways The Force Awakens shook a couple things up and some very minor spoilers I’ve seen.

I saw Rogue One last year and thought it was fine. Not a fantastic movie, but an interesting mess, I guess. I can’t honestly remember much about it right now except for the ending. And the robot being the best part of the movie.

Also rewatched Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (the original theatrical versions) semi-recently (before TLJ came out) and thought they were good. Empire Strikes Back is obviously the best Star Wars; it has the strongest identity, the strongest storyline, etc. Return of the Jedi is a decent popcorn flick. Not exactly cutting edge opinions there.

I know I’ve seen the Ewok movie at some point but it’s been 20 years at least since I even looked in that direction.

Not looking forward to the Han Solo origin movie.

Getting tired of Disney screaming Star Wars marketing at me every year, all year (though it’s getting to feel more like background radiation now.)

Saw the original Genndy “Clone Wars” shorts, liked them, didn’t love them. Never saw any of the Star Wars TV cartoons, though I hear good things about them.

Never read a Star Wars comic book before, but I own one of the Omnibuses from a Humble Bundle a few years ago.

There’s probably more to say but this post has gone on long enough and I feel like I’m scraping for things to say.

#questions #star wars #podracer #jedi knight #jedi outcast #factor 5 #Anonymous

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returnerofthesky · 7 years

Note

tbh i never knew you were a fan of starfox since you like never post about it lmao

Sorry for taking so long to answer this. Again, trip, staying off of Tumblr, etc. :V

I’d say I’m a fan of Star Fox the same way I’m a fan of Sonic - they were both big influences on me when I was younger (and not just the whole furry angle either), but nowadays I’m only really a fan of... “part” of the series, despite still enjoying the franchise and wanting to see it keep going. Star Fox 2 is my favorite of them all, and the only one I’ve gone back to play more than just once or twice, which probably speaks for itself.

For me, Star Fox feels a lot like how Zelda did in that it feels like the series simply has not been allowed to evolve. It’s gotten so mired in a lot of old traditions (gameplay-wise or story-wise) that it doesn’t seem like a lot of people know really what to do with it, and this becomes a lot more glaring with how few games there actually are in the series. In a lot of ways I’d say that the series has been “suffering from success” for years, and I think it’s going to take a BotW-style shift in order for the series to truly survive.

Most of that probably sounds vague, so let me put it another way - there’s two things that I think the developers really need to realize:

One, shmups are a really, extremely niche genre nowadays. Maybe back in the 80s and 90s shmups were all the rage, whether they were 2D or 3D, but nowadays shmups basically seem to be interchangeable with bullet hell. Linear corridor-esqe shooters really aren’t a thing anymore, even in indie circles; Star Fox Zero was the last space shooter game that I can remember coming out with a lot of fanfare in a long, long time.

The thing that made me realize this was Dan Ryckert’s review of Zero back when it came out, in which he stated that he liked the game alright aside from the motion controls issue and some minor stuff, and that it felt like the sequel to 64 that everyone always wanted... but nowadays, that still felt incredibly outdated. Like it would have been a really well-received sequel if it had been released back in the 2000s, but nowadays the industry had simply moved on after so many years.

Two, Star Fox 64 is... just kinda alright.

Like, it’s a good game. I’m not going to say something stupid (and untrue) by calling it bad, because it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But there’s no denying that much of the game has aged, even with the 3DS rerelease. The bump in grahpics and sound quality was desperately needed (even if I think I prefer the older voice acting, as it sounds a bit more natural), but, as I said, shmups are a genre that’s fallen out of favor, and a large chunk of 64′s gameplay consists of rail shooter levels. And since the all-range mode, while good, mostly consists of fairly barebones maps with few obstacles or details...

I’m perfectly willing to admit that part of that is personal bias - I’ve talked before about how more arcade-y games and genres (like shmups) generally don’t grab me very well, as they’re usually much more stressful and frustrating for me to play. I find the all-range modes to be a lot more my style, even though they have their faults in 64. But the rail shooter sections in Star Fox have never bothered me as much as, say, Thunder Force (where I repeatedly lose track of everything happening at once and die on the first stage). That said, they’re still not that interesting, and as I mentioned last paragraph, all-range doesn’t fare much better in 64 either.

Of course, despite all that, SF64 is still a really iconic game that commands a lot of weight and respect - but despite being awed by the game when I was a tiny five year old tot, I think that most of what people remember about SF64 doesn’t stem from the gameplay itself. Instead, most of what’s kept the game so well-remembered comes from its presentation; the voice acting, the script full of memorable lines, the scenarios presented for each level, so on and so forth.

That’s not to say that the gameplay itself isn’t good, just that none of it feels like it really... “sticks”. Despite Sector X being about the robot boss destroying the base, I don’t really remember much of the level itself, just the boss fight. Despite Titania being about going to save Slippy, it’s mostly just a slog of fighting birds and other junk before actually reaching the interesting bit (it’s worth noting that Titania in Zero is much improved in this regard, with more variation in terrain and obstacles). All-range mode usually is a lot more memorable to me.

So of course, if 64 is more memorable for it’s presentation than most of the actual gameplay, and if half of its gameplay (shmup) has slowly turned into a niche genre, what happens? Well, as you might expect, I think the series needs to start putting more focus and care into the other half of its gameplay: all-range mode. And funnily enough, I think the developers(es), at least on some level, realize this as well.

If that sounds weird, let me point this out: after Star Fox on the SNES, the sequel immediately shifted gears from a rail shooter to an outright dogfight game, with some small strategy elements thrown in to add nuance to the space shooting. Star Fox 64, despite having shmup gameplay, also included a number of all-range levels and sequences. Star Fox Assault expanded on this with half-shmup, half-all-range, with on-foot sections and more detailed levels since you could go on foot. Star Fox Zero did the same, reintroducing the Walker instead of on-foot sections and making a lot of all-range sequences with impressive details and obstacles.

Do you see what I’m getting at here? The series has always, always, been drifting more and more towards emphasizing the all-range mode, expanding on it in many different ways and in a lot of ways improving and polishing it to the point where it easily could be a highlight. In fact, the reason it isn’t a highlight usually isn’t because of all-range mode itself, but because of other factors. Gyro controls, wonky cameras, iffy third-person-shooter gameplay, etc etc.

Take, for example, Zoness, in Zero. In it, you’re teleported to an enemy base on Zoness and have to infiltrate it without being detected, by sneaking through a main corridor, flying into power generator rooms and disabling the power shield so the place self-destructs (and then you have to escape while it crumbles, obviously). Unfortunately, you’re flying the Gyrowing, making the whole level this slow, annoying slog, and that doesn’t even take into account the aiming controls themselves.

However, there’s an alternate version of the level where you visit in the Arwing instead, and you have to do the same mission but on a seven minute time limit. Utilizing the Arwing/Walker in order to explore and escape the base is an incredible improvement on the level; it’s faster, smoother, and more fun to play - if they stripped out the time limit (keep it, just as a challenge level) and made it the default level instead of the Gyrowing, I bet the level would have been much more well received.

Another example of a really good all-range level from Zero is, of course, Sector Beta, and not just because it basically crams every named character from 64 into one giant love letter. It essentially consists of dogfighting between Andross and Cornerian forces (like Katina from 64), eventually getting through a giant battleship’s shield and infiltrating it in Walker form, and then battling Star Wolf while the rest of the battle keeps going on. There’s no frills or exploration like in Zoness, it’s just pure space shooting, and it’s an excellent level because of it.

For one that isn’t from Zero, anyone remember Sargasso Space Zone from Assault? It’s kind of a combination of both styles of all-range mission, where you have to get inside of the base and destroy some teleporter things while fighting enemies inside, but then after destroying them, Star Wolf pops up and you finish off by having a dogfight with them and other normal enemy fighters.

All of these are solid examples of how all-range mode works, and I feel like focusing more on these levels is where the series needs to head. I wouldn’t necessarily say that shmup gameplay should disappear forever, and I wouldn’t do away with absolutely all arcade-y aspects of the series, either (the high score counter is perfectly fine, for instance, and linear segments can work as small one-offs).

The games need a major shake up in order to survive, and I think making a game focused more around the dogfighting aspect rather than the corridor shooting would work quite well. That’s the reason I compare it to Zelda; it might not have nearly as many games under its belt and be quite as much of a staple, but Star Fox really needs its own Breath of the Wild to catch up with the times. Whether it goes the route of essentially becoming like a Rogue Squadron game, or if it takes Star Fox 2′s concept of light RTS elements and designs a game like it, something needs to give, and considering Nintendo’s recent habit of reviving their games with the right modern touches and the old, less-necessary traditions tweaked or changed, I think they could do it.

(Stick with the Zero aesthetic, though - the mixture of elements from SNES and 64 work juuuuuuuust right to me)

#star fox #sky rambles #Anonymous

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pokefan531 · 7 years

Text

Emulators for FX-8350

As of December 24, 2019:

I wanted to test out some performance of the FX 8350 processor since I am concerned about the single thread performance that most emulators relies, and several Intel architecture have better single thread performance than AMD fx processors while going lower clock speed. That also goes back to Sandy Bridge as having a better IPC that high end emulators is capable of, so I wanted to mention this so that if any emulator works full speed with certain settings on my desktop. I will also post my laptop benchmark after the mentioned emulators on the FX 8350, and also running at 4.0 ghz without turbo, as it has very little boost for those programs. Pretty much, any recent i7 processor in the last few years at least performs nearly double the performance as this CPU.

All Retroarch test will use audio sync off and speed limit off to get the highest fps, and have vsync off, hard sync off, runahead off, and frame delay off.

Benchmarks: FX-8350-4ghz

All tests are using the lowest FPS on the exact scene for a while to see how it performs and to see how to avoid sound suttering to have smooth experience. Retroarch is using DX11 as main, Vulkan is used second for hardware rendering, and OpenGL last for the cores hardware rendering. Standalones on some emulators may be used for reliability or doesn't exist as a libretro core. Testing a 3D emulator that only has OpenGL rendering, Nvidia cards are the best to see the fastest performance for OpenGL Rendering. Using DX11 or Vulkan wouldn't matter. GPU bottleneck is not an issue by using native resolution without any shaders or anti-aliasing applied. The lowest FPS of a heavy game is a way to see which Emulator you could generally use. Note, if a specific system hardware to emulate one most demanding game doesn't go fullspeed, doesn't mean you can't use the emulator for general good performance. Dolphin's demanding game is Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike, and it's not playable. You may not play one game that is only demanding, but to see how popular titles perform. Some emulators may not play a demanding game due to emulator compatibility. It's a good way to see how good of a performance you would get to use it generally. Having over 60fps is a great way to have smooth experience and to throw any or most games without any problem. While I'm putting the lowest FPS that you can encounter (not counting stutter, but constant), the average FPS is a few more fps for somewhat or really demanding emulator, or several more on less demanding emulators.

Overclocking:

FX-8350 is overclockable. Only a good quality motherboard, especially the 990FX boards, can overclock the CPU fairly high. Many can reach great overclocking to 4.8Ghz, and certain number of users can reach it to 5Ghz. Not every users can reach that far either because of the silicon quality of their 8350, or in my situation, have a lower quality motherboard. I am using Asrock 970 Extreme4, and I couldn't overclock my CPU without it throttling. It means doing stress tests on all cores, it will throttle down to lowest clock of the CPU, 1400Mhz, for a while. It's due to the VRM design and motherboard not having 8+2 power input for overclocking an eight core CPU.

I did a little workaround. I set my CPU to disable core parking, or use one core per chip. I get four cores. FX-8350 has four modules. It has two integer cores, and one floating point needs to be shared. Disabling core parking would have each module only use one integer and one floating point, and you do gain emulator speed of up to 5%. Since I am only using four cores on this situation, I can apply decent overclocking. I can go up to 4.4Ghz V1.3 from 4.0 V1.275. It receives mild throttling when only doing stress tests like Intel Burn Test or Prime95. Keep in mind, for emulators like RPCS3, Xenia, or Angrylion-Plus plugin, it does need more cores. Cemu is still fine for four core CPU. Switching from 2 recompilers to 3 has small improvement.

What about the default boost? The boost goes to 4.2Ghz on one core, but since my motherboard is not really strong, the boost doesn't stay consistent and barely helps the performance. I only see an increase of 1FPS.

NES:

Mesen-Stock: Megaman 2 Intro

300.0+

Mesen-Very-High-OC:Megaman 2 Intro

137.0 (151.0)

Nestopia UE works very well and very light. Mesen performs great with the overclocking setting.

SMS/GG/Genesis/CD/32x:

Genesis-GX-Nuked: Virtua Racing Demos

150.0

The Genesis GX Plus core is too efficient to find any issue, and it is the most accurate currently and it was made for GC and Wii. Recently, a new OPN2 audio is added to it, and nuked FM sound doesn't reduce speed as much on this processor. The test above only played Virtua Racing Genesis with Nuked YM2612 and low pass. Virtua Racing is the test for performance since it uses SVP chip.

SNES:

Bsnes-v110: Yoshi's Island Title Screen

122.0 (137.0)

ST018 ARM Game

84.0 (93.0)

Bsnes-v110(Higan): Yoshi's Island Title Screen

46.0 (50.0)

ST018 ARM Game

38.0 (41.0)

New Bsnes from Byuu seems pretty useful for more accuracy and is based on Higan, the most accurate emulator. It has fast options turned on by default, and has game checks to disable some fast option for accuracy fixes, and can do high resolutions on Mode 7 games.

Performance on the Fx-8350 is pretty solid. The most demanding games are the ones that uses ST018 chip and only three japanese games has it, but one is used for testing. It should perform pretty well right out of the box. For HD Mode 7, I can go up to 1440p. However it goes near down to 60fps, and 1200p is probably the best option to have smooth performance while playing games in high resolution.

You can turn Bsnes into Higan level accuracy by uncheck all enhancements options.

I suggest using current Bsnes core or new standalone, since it offers many things better, and don't pick other bsnes versions on retroarch. I haven't tested the Super FX overclocking feature.

I recommend the main SNES9X if you want to fast forward and use Retroarch's Runahead for less latency.

Virtual Boy: Simple, perfect performance, regardless of hard sync.

Sega Saturn:

Mednafen Saturn: Daytona USA CCE

44.0 (51.0)

Yaba Sanshiro: Daytona USA CCE

60.0+

Kronos 1.4.5: Daytona USA CCE

65.0 (72.0)

Haven't test that much games as I didn't look around Saturn games that much, but I found a few and had tested before. In Daytona, the title screen after fading from the demo seems to be the test I could find that performs lower in Mednafen.

SSF, the only best Saturn emulator exclusive for Windows, seems to have identical speed with Mednafen, only slightly faster, but I haven't use it that much for a long time.

Yaba Sanshiro is tested and I was getting full speed on any game I used. The performance and OpenGL rendering is pretty great. I haven't force vsync off yet, but it should run much faster. Well, certain graphics can have less compatibility and not all games work on its dynamic recompiler, but it performs really good.

Kronos, as of 1.7.0, I can run the cached interpreter pretty well. I get full speed on pretty much any game, and since it used the cached interpreter, it does have more compatibility with more games than Yaba Sanshiro. Performance is plenty for the FX cpu. Remember AMD drivers would make Yaba and Kronos perform lower since it uses OpenGL, but Linux will run it in full potential. I used standalone build since they perform the best and got more updates.

Mednafen-Saturn can drop to 3/4 of fullspeed sometimes, so I would just use the other two emulators.

PlayStation:

Mednafen-PSX SW: Crash Team Racing

71.0 (75.0)

I've tested this game during the entire intro from starting the race to Crash waking up from the grass. I've only test this in software. Mednafen-PSX works perfectly in speed on any game I used with default settings. I can play any game with PGXP at any resolution. Vulkan plays the fastest. PGXP + CPU plays game at near fullspeed so you can notice the suttter on the sound.

On PCSX-R PGXP, it should run any game in full speed with PGXP Memory Used the fastest and compatible Pete's OpenGL2 2.9 Tweak. I can overclock the emulator's CPU to 2x-4x without speed penalty. Since the recommend plugins have audio do async, some games can get away with near fullspeed when using PGXP + CPU like Spyro. GPUblade runs decently, but use Pete's Software or better, Mednafen PSX for better performance on Software Rendering.

N64:

ParaLLEl-Plus: Pokemon Snap Intro

17.0

Project64-Plus: Pokemon Snap Intro

23.5

All of them are tested with Angrylion-Plus with available RSP to LLE. GlideN64 works very well on my system on any emulator. It performs great and had no performance penality on any demanding games on full framebuffer settings. The new plugin, Angrylion-Plus, is good for FX-8350 since it has 8 cores and you are able to use it. On newest Project64, you get better performance if you use the default RSP in LLE mode than Hatcat or CXD4 RSP in LLE. Many games runs well with Angrylion-Plus, but not every game are at fullspeed, like the test in one scene in Pokemon Snap where 25fps is there. That scene is the most stress testing I could find for N64 game when using LLE as well as being close to an explosion at Goldeneye 007. The performance is only bottlenecked by the RSP LLE core. It does render more frames on those scenes than the console would, because GPU bottleneck isn't emulated. You do get better performance than Angrylion without multi-threading, but LLE is not as fast yet. M64P does have on par or slightly better compatibility than Project64.

Dreamcast: Forget NullDC and Demul, because Reicast's fork called, Flycast, is a much better emulator, generally speaking. Flycast runs pretty well on Libretro, but more stable as a standalone app. Games runs pretty well, including WinCE games. Vulkan is available so you can use it with AMD GPUs on Windows with no performance penalty. https://flyinghead.github.io/flycast-builds/

GBA: Plays very fine. Generally very high FPS on any with fast forwarding.

NDS:

Desmume 0.9.11+: Pokemon Black2/White2 Title Screen

55.0 (61.0) / 77.0 (83.0) Interpreter/100 JIT

MelonDS 0.9.0: Pokemon Black2/White2 Title Screen

32.0 (38.0) / 57.0 / 81.0 Software/OpenGL/OpenGL(Dynamic-8)

I'm testing two emulators and testing Pokemon B2W2 title screen. Let's go to MelonDS first. Since 0.8, it has OpenGL rendering and can use higher resolution than 1x. It is faster and a bit faster than threaded software. Even higher resolution is faster than Desmume. For my FX CPU, it is almost reaching fullspeed with OpenGL on a known demanding scene. Generally, it plays at fullspeed for many games, but only the Interpreter is the bottleneck. MelonDS 0.9 will have dynamic recompiler, and it performs really well. On the same scene, it is 81FPS so it is really smooth for the FX CPU. Threaded Rendering can reach almost OpenGL performance. However, it can break certain compatibility slightly more than OpenGL.

Desmume, well I can use dynamic recompiler and OpenGL, but I tested the Interpreter with any accuracy options ticked and leave it at 1x resolution for a fair comparison. Video rendering is not the bottleneck for the Interpreter. Both Software and OpenGL perform really fast, especially Software. OpenGL seems demanding on higher resolutions, more than MelonDS. Recent builds seems to match old x432 build or a bit faster, but still reliable. Generally, go with MelonDS for the CPU.

GameCube/Wii:

Dolphin x64 2019-11-28: Super Mario Galaxy

65.0 (72.0)

Rogue Squadron 2

31.2 ()

Performs very well on many games, but the heavy games like Rogue Leader or Wind Waker won't get stable 60fps as far as I know, regardless of graphic resolutions and api. Most demanding game that is compatible is Rogue Squadron 2. Games like Rogue Squadron 2 can be slow in some scenes, especially on one scene on Hoth with many entities onscreen from the startup cutscene. Generally, games like those won't be on fullspeed a couple of times, and that includes games like Twilight Princess or Metroid Prime 3.

PS2:

Shadow of the Colossus - PCSX2 1.5.0-dev

Safest: 24.3 (26.8)

Safe: 25.7 (28.7)

Balanced: 28.3 (30.8)

Balanced SW: 14.7

Aggressive: 49.8 (56.7)

Very Aggressive: 52.3 (58.8)

I barely have PS2 games, but I found at least certain ones. With FX-8350, it helps more on Software Rendering on less CPU demanding games. It may not perform fullspeed with GPU demanding games if running software, but for hardware, those games should play fine, if they are not demanding on the CPU. Two cores are used by default, with the second relating to the graphics. MTVU threading does help with some games that uses them, and is in high compability, but can hang or slow some games. Graphic plugins are using SSE4 ones. With Shadow of the Colossus, it is commonly known to be CPU demanding. The FX-8350 won't be playing at fullspeed, even on Hardware mode with default settings. I tested out the speed hack presets above. I suggest either safe or balanced, but balanced only enables MTVU threading, which can improve performance on some games.

PSP: I haven't had any performance issue on cpu side of PPSSPP.

Wii U: On Cemu, I can play Mario Kart 8 very well. It's best to set the cache buffer to low as going high doesn't show any benefits. As of 1.14.0, I can play with shared shader cache to avoid shader compilation stutter. In game, it is usually borderline fullspeed when using triple core recompiler. Usually hits down to 56fps at the lowest, but not really noticable due to having async audio. That's the only game I tested and I will stick around any latest cemu version in the future that doesn't remove async audio or have an impact on performance so it could run decently on my hardware or lower ones without hearing sound stutter. If it's about running Breath of the Wild, I've seen it run around 30fps, so using FPS++ Dynamic or Static 30fps is what gives you the best gameplay. As of 1.16.0, it has Vulkan Renderer, so it runs really well on AMD GPUs.

3DS: As of DrWhojan's or Canary builds, they are best to use with games that are playable with it, like Pokemon Sun and Moon, ORAS, or Metroid with speed improvements. More games are playable since the GPU shaders and ignore implemtation. For my processor with this build, Pokemon Sun does reach fullspeed aside the shader compilation, so it does stutter when new objects are loaded. Also, there is no shader cache yet. Mario Kart 7 does play fullspeed most of the time. Looking at the lens flare directly, it does go almost fullspeed at native resolution. Higher resolutions does perform lower, but it does relate to CPU usage. I would benchmark Monster Hunter games since they are really heavy, but they are not playable, and not even fast for high end Intel CPUs too. The sound stretching is checked off for mine so that the audio stutter won't last too long or act weird when you encounter a stutter.

Dosbox: I used to use Dosbox Daum Build and Dosbox-X and they're buggy, especially the first one. Use Dosbox ECE instead since it has many features that the main build doesn't have and it aims for accuracy and performance. In normal mode instead of dynamic, I can have cycles up to 35000 in intro of Jazz Jackrabbit CD as a test since I only found that scene to be most stress testing, but I don't know what is the heaviest DOS game that uses more of the host's CPU when aiming for the highest cycles in normal mode. Used Nuked OPL3 and Gravis Ultrasound. Using the max settings is recommended as it will give you smooth experience without sound crackling, even in dynamic mode. PCEM, I can only use the Pentium 75 or Cyrix PR90. These processor are the only one I can use without any slowdowns at best on Socket 7 emulated PC. Any Voodoo cards runs well, at least for 480p resolutions. On 486 platform, I can use AMD 5x86/P75 at max with dynamic recompiler. In Interpreter mode, I can just use 486-DX2-66mhz maximum without encountering any stutter.

PS3: I only used Kingdom Hearts on RPCS3, and it runs pretty good. I know a lot of popular titles are more demanding and it won't be playable on an FX CPU. RPCS3 is one of those emulators where you do need all threads available.

Recommended Emulators:

NES: Mesen

SMS/GG/Genesis: Genesis GX Plus

SNES: BSNES v111, Snes9x

PSX: Mednafen PSX HW

N64: Mupen64Plus (M64P Gliden64)

Saturn: Kronos

Dreamcast: Flycast

PS2: PCSX2

GC/Wii: Dolphin

Xbox: CXBX-Reloaded

Wii U: Cemu

PS3: RCPS3

X360: XeinaSwitch: Yuzu

GB/GBC: Sameboy

GBA: mGBA

NDS: Desmume Dev

3DS: Citra

PSP: PPSSPP

PCEM: Pentium 75

DOS: Dosbox ECE

Recommended emulators are listed as usable. If a system or emulator is not listed, it either that it won't be playable due to speed, not past playable yet, or too fast enough to play (Stella, Atari 2600). The emulators on the list are recommended for general use. This is using stock settings on most emulators listed.

If any of you know what are the most demanding games for GBA, Saturn, Dreamcast, or DOS, let me know and comment.

Using AMD cards on OpenGL Emulators:

Recently, I switched the GTX 950 to RX 570 8GB for more affordable huge VRAM to produce videos at 4K. I test some emulators that only uses OpenGL. Some were slower than expected, at least on Windows.

Citra seems to not reach full potencial of the hardware shaders. Still faster than without it, but on Battle Royal in Pokemon Sun and Moon, the least fps I got without counting shader stuttering is 30fps, which is the normal speed, even unchecking limited speed. It goes up to 50fps.

On GlideN64, Quake 2 does have the stutter on the demo on few areas. It hasn't happened before. Using 2D rendering options makes the entire thing slower. It does support Depth Compare fine, but 2D rendering is the problem as well as the additional minor slowdown, regardless of resolution. Glide64 does have stuttering too, but GlideN64 is better used.

Reicast and Redream, plays fine as far as I tested.

Cemu, as noted, it will perform slower. On Mario Kart 8, the lowest is 32fps, and average is usually 50fps. It rarely goes fullspeed.

Using Linux with Mesa Drivers, RadeonSI and RADV:

I tested OpenGL emulators on Ubuntu with Mesa 18.2.2. It does perform better or as good as Nvidia's OpenGL drivers.

On GlideN64, all the slowdowns on Quake 2 are gone. I don't have that problem. 2D rendering hasn't been tested, but should perform fine. Depth Compare isn't fully supported since few extensions hasn't been implented yet to the drivers. Depth Compare is a new feature added to GlideN64. Glide64 does have minor stutters, just like how it happened before. GlideN64 is overall faster.

On Citra, it does perform closer to Nvidia. Hardware Shaders is used, and it does perform a bit faster than official drivers.

That's all I've tested.

The end:

I plan to upgrade my FX-8350 to Ryzen 3rd Gen CPU, and I would see great benefits of many of those emulators. It would be the last time I would be testing it. I put all the benchmarks here to show the power of the CPU that can run some demanding emulators. I had this post for two years, and I do plan to upload the Ryzen CPU benchmarks for emulators. Merry Christmas.

#fx-8350 #emulators

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spynotebook · 7 years

Link

All Images: Lucasfilm/Disney.

The arrival of a new Star Wars movie is heralded by several things: Breathless anticipation, piles of ancillary merchandise, and the release of a new Visual Dictionary. Written by the Lucasfilm Story Group’s Pablo Hidalgo (who also did books for Rogue One and The Force Awakens), The Last Jedi’s guidebook is not only filled with intriguing details about the places and people seen in the film, but a few potential hints about the future of the Star Wars galaxy, too.

How Bombers Work in Space

Of the many nitpicks some people have with The Last Jedi this one is pretty minimal, but some fans have questioned how the Resistance’s bomber squadrons in the opening battle of the movie were meant to deliver their explosive payloads, considering, well... you can’t just “drop” bombs on top of a gigantic dreadnought in microgravity, after all. So how did Paige Tico eventually (and tragically) deliver her final bombing run? The answer, of course, is pretty simple: science. Well, magnets, more specifically, but they basically are science. According to the book, the MG-100 Starfortress pushes its payload out of its containment rack with “sequenced electromagnetic plates,” and the proton bombs then are “drawn magnetically to their unfortunate targets.”

The Mystery of Snoke’s Ring, Solved

Ever since Snoke’s glam look for The Last Jedi was revealed, there’s been theories (hilariously, er, cut short by Snoke’s end in the film) about the giant black crystal in his ring. Could it be a new kind of Kyber Crystal, powered with the dark side and blackened by Snoke’s evil? Well, it’s not, but it does have a major dark side connection. The stone is actually obsidian, but it comes from a surprising place: the catacombs beneath Darth Vader’s castle on Mustafar, as seen in Rogue One. Makes sense, given Snoke’s fascination with sources of dark side power.

What Happened to Black Squadron?

The Resistance takes one hell of a beating in The Last Jedi. They’re scattered, isolated, and slowly but surely reduced to little more than a handful of battered survivors. But not all hope is lost for their numbers: and just because we didn’t see them in The Last Jedi doesn’t mean Poe’s former comrades in Black Squadron are toast. According to the Visual Dictionary, most of the pilots who remained after the Starkiller Base attack were sent to other evacuation points across the galaxy, or on other missions at the time of the fleet’s escape from D’Qar. So yes, there’s a good chance the likes of Snap Wexley and Jess Pava are still alive—and maybe not everything is quite so dire for the Resistance’s numbers heading into Episode IX.

The Sentimentality of Leia’s Hair

I’ve noted before the Visual Dictionary series’ admirable dedication to the most extreme minutiae, even hair. But The Last Jedi’s book adds an extra layer of sadness to the fabulous coifs of Leia Organa in the movie. As well as describing her clothes as being suitably muted to reflect the dire circumstances of the Resistance, an annotated image pointing to the braid atop Leia’s hairstyle describes it as an “Alderaanian mourning braid,” presumably being worn in remembrance of the still-raw pain of Han’s passing in The Force Awakens. Sniff.

Teräs Käsi Lives

An offhand mention in the list of fighting styles Snoke’s red-clad Praetorian Guard are trained in inadvertently re-canonizes one aspect of one of the most infamously terrible Star Wars games ever: the 3D fighting game Masters of Teräs Käsi, for the original Playstation. Teräs Käsi was an unarmed combat style practiced by a character created for the widely-panned game, Arden Lyn, an assassin recruited by the Emperor to hunt down Luke Skywalker and the heroes of the Alliance after Yavin IV to... challenge them to a fistfight, basically. At least Masters of Teräs Käsi also gave us Hoar, one of the most delightful excesses of the old Expanded Universe.

The Unspecific Love Life of Poe Dameron

While The Last Jedi may have the honor of the first appearance of an LGBTQ character on-screen (although it’s never acknowledged in the film, a previous novel appearance for Laura Dern’s Resistance Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo hints at the character being pansexual), many have hoped that Poe Dameron would be revealed as being LGBTQ, alongside Finn, thanks to Oscar Isaac and John Boyega’s excellent chemistry in The Force Awakens.

In The Last Jedi Finn might find himself drawn towards Rose romantically, but Poe’s desires are left to the imagination once more... although The Visual Dictionary does hint that the X-Wing flyboy has some romantic aspirations. A brief description reveals that Poe wears the ring of his mother, Shara Bey—first seen in the Shattered Empire comic miniseries—around his neck, and Poe is “waiting to share it someday with the right partner.” Note the gender-neutral wording there playing it safe, but you can keep dreaming for now.

As an adorable aside that’s potentially related, another annotation in the book states that the patched-up needlework on Finn’s jacket in the movie was done by Poe, repairing the lightsaber slashes left in the jacket while Finn was comatose. Somewhere there has to be fan art of this extremely canonical moment already, surely?

The Weird Way Hux’s Hyperspace Tracker Works

The Last Jedi utilizes everything from Hyperspace to the Force in new and surprising ways for a Star Wars movie, but at least when it comes to hyperspace, the advanced tracking system used to hunt the Resistance down through lightspeed jumps isn’t the only weird way the technology is used. The book describes the physical housing of the Hyperpsace Tracker on Snoke’s flagship as being flanked by computers insulated in their own localized hyperspace field—bending light and time in such a manner that it essentially hypercharges the computational power of the computers, letting them work fast enough to handle the number of calculations needed to track another vessel at faster-than-light speeds. Maybe that’s what the Empire thinktanks at the time of Rogue One hadn’t figured out yet!

Those Resistance Ships Weren’t as Empty as You Thought

Part of the primary storyline of The Last Jedi sees the Resistance Fleet slowly lose ship after ship while being hunted by the First Order, indicating that when each ship was about to run out of fuel and drift back into range of the First Order’s weapons, all but its pilot would abandon ship and escape to another (and, eventually, Crait). But not all those ships were run by just one remaining heroic commander. A passage in The Visual Dictionary touching on the sentimental loyalty of Resistance Droids—treated as equals by the Resistance to the point that they were allowed spaces on the evacuation ships—notes that, when the situation the ragtag group found themselves in turned truly dire, many droids chose to give up their spaces on the lifeboats shuttled down the Resistance Fleet in order to maximise space for their biological crewmates. So when you see those ships explode, know that tons of poor droids went kamblammo with them too.

The First Order’s Kids Actually Serve

With Finn, it was established that the First Order swiped kids at a young age to become brainwashed members of the Stormtrooper corps in The Force Awakens. But not every member of the Order is taken and programmed against their will—some are simply people who believe in the need for strength and order in a chaotic galaxy, or people swept up in the propaganda of the old Empire. That includes children, who are often considered the most zealous adherents of the First Order having been brought up with its teachings from a young age—and then put into military service, unlike the Imperial youth organizations of the Empire.

Although indoctrinated trainees for the Stormtrooper corps were only allowed into combat upon reaching adulthood, First Order children can serve in non-combat roles across the Navy and military, leading to a bunch of teens—or “subadults,” a term usually reserved for animals, as the Visual Dictionary creepily refers to them as—being in operation aboard the vessels seen in the movie.

GIF

Everyone’s Wrong About How to Eat Porg, According to Chewbacca

The closer we got to The Last Jedi’s release, the more the Porg discourse—the disporgse, if you will—turned to the bizarre question of “What does Porg taste like?” because on the inside, we’re all depraved monsters. But according to The Visual Dictionary, the meat is not the part of the Ahch-To bird’s body we should be eating. An annotation on an image of Chewbacca’s improvised Porg-spit seen briefly in the movie claims that, at least to Wookiees, the most delicious and nutritious part of a Porg is the crunchy, roasted Porg feet. We assume these will be added to the menus of Disneyland’s restaurants shortly.

#IFTTT #Feedly

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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25 Best Nintendo 64 Games Ever Made

https://ift.tt/2UHBAkX

There’s a lot to be said about the Nintendo 64’s accomplishments, shortcomings, and legacy, but when most people think back on their time with the console, it’s hardly a surprise that they tend to focus on its best games.

While you could certainly make the argument that the PlayStation had the stronger overall library of games (or at least a greater diversity of experiences in its top 100 games), the N64 is rightfully remembered as the home of an elite group of titles that changed gaming forever as they stole the hearts of a generation who love them for their innovations, charm, and, ability to bring friends together for multiplayer memories that would last a lifetime.

Those are the games we’re paying tribute to today. These are the 25 best N64 games ever made:

25. Mario Party 2

Choosing which N64 Mario Party game to highlight is really a toss-up, but in case you’re wondering, the quality of Mario Party 2’s minigames ultimately put it over the top.

In any case, Mario Party 2 remains one of gaming’s greatest digital board game experiences. Equally capable of making or breaking friendships, Mario Party 2 is one of the riskiest dice rolls when it comes to game night selections. Thta’s honestly a big part of the reason it’s so easy to love.

24. Wave Race 64

You don’t hear many people talk about Wave Race 64 these days, which is quite surprising. Not only was it one of the best of the arcade-style console racing games of its era, but it’s one of the games that helped showcase the power and potential of the N64.

Wave Race 64’s visuals won’t blow any minds these days, but this game’s amazing track designs and incredible controls make it shockingly easy to pick up, play, and enjoy even if you are a graphics snob. It’s a testament to the quality of the N64’s other racing games that this isn’t higher.

23. Jet Force Gemini

I completely understand if Jet Force Gemini’s strange structure and mechanical issues make it hard for you to enjoy the game today. Even at the time of its release, this one rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

Yet, there’s something about Jet Force Gemini’s bizarre blend of gameplay styles that’s impossible to not at least be a little fascinated by. This was Rare at their most experimental, which makes it that much more of a shame that they (or really anyone else for that matter) never made another game quite like this one.

22. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil

Granted, this probably isn’t the FPS you think of when you think of the most famous N64 FPS titles, but it’s always been a shame that this game has struggled to escape the shadow of some considerable competition.

Turok 2’s incredible graphics and phenomenal sound design rightfully stole the show at the time of its release, but years later, it’s the game’s labyrinth levels and unique weapons that feel like a breath of fresh air. Turok 2‘s multiplayer has even aged surprisingly well.

21. Super Smash Bros.

The Super Smash Bros. series didn’t reveal its full potential until Melee, but it’s impossible to talk about the best N64 games without giving the original at least a little love.

What should have been a gimmick turned out to be one of the N64’s most surprising hits. Anyone could hop in and enjoy playing this fighting game with friends, and most of us had the privilege of doing just that and forging some great gaming memories in the process.

20. 1080º Snowboarding

Fun fact: this spot was going to go to the N64 version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, but then I remembered that port’s butchered soundtrack. It’s hard to look past that…thing.

So instead, 1080º Snowboarding gets the nod that it’s too often denied. Before every extreme sports game tried to be THPS, 1080 offered a unique and fundamentally enjoyable snowboarding experience that emphasized technique without sacrificing pick-up-and-play fun.

19. Diddy Kong Racing

I still can’t believe that Rare had the guts to challenge Mario Kart in an arena that franchise pretty much built, but it has to be said that Diddy Kong Racing came closer to dethroning the king than anyone thought was possible.

Diddy Kong Racing’s incredible courses and the way they forced you to utilize different vehicles is undoubtedly one of the game’s highlights, but as an N64 gamer that didn’t constantly have someone else to play with, I’ve also always appreciated how this title featured a single-player campaign that was so much more than racing against bots.

18. Pokémon Snap

Throughout this list, you’re going to hear the word “creativity” (or some version of it) quite a bit. Nintendo has never been afraid to get weird with it, but something about this console’s hardware and the experimental nature of game design at the time made the N64 the home of games we’ve rarely seen before or since.

Even though it eventually got its long-overdue follow-up, Pokémon Snap has to be one of the best examples of the N64 at its weirdest. A game about taking pictures of Pokémon while on a kind of glorified safari? Sure, why not. Just make sure to make it magical while you’re at it.

17. Excitebike 64

You know, I might owe Excitebike 64 an apology for leaving it off a recent list of the hardest N64 games. This was a truly difficult racing game that even veterans at the time struggled to master.

It’s also one of the deepest and most bountiful racing games of the arguable golden era of the genre. Somewhere between an extreme sports arcade game and a sim, Excitebike 64’s gameplay was just approachable enough to keep you glued to the action but deep enough to ensure you were constantly challenging yourself to do better.

16. Sin and Punishment

Even if Sin and Punishment wasn’t a pretty weird game that featured one of the strangest control schemes in N64 history (which, given the controller we’re talking about, is really saying something), its late in the game November 2000 Japan-only release date would have been enough to ensure most people didn’t play this one.

That’s a shame, because this fast-paced and beautiful on-rails shooter may just be developer Treasure’s masterpiece. Sure, this is a bit of a hipster pick, but it’s hard to walk away from Sin and Punishment and not feel your hands vibrating as your mind tries to process the intensity of what you just experienced.

15. Banjo-Kazooie

Rare’s incredible run of N64 games is arguably best remembered for that one shooter you just know we’re going to talk about soon and the studio’s 3D platforming titles. So far as the latter category goes, this might just be their masterpiece.

Before Rare arguably lost its way a bit by becoming a little too obsessed with the “collect-a-thon” format, Banjo-Kazooie offered one of the most visually creative and genuinely fun 3D platforming experiences of this era. It’s no surprise many collectible-obsessed gamers can trace their addictions back to this true classic.

14. Conker’s Bad Fur Day

You don’t have to try too hard to find the design flaws in Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and you certainly don’t have to try too hard to point out the many ways this game’s edgy humor loses some of its potency once you’ve passed the age of 15 or so.

Even still, there’s something wonderful about Conker’s Bad Fur Day that’s just as hard to overlook. This was essentially Rare throwing everything they had at the wall (and then some) in order to say goodbye to the N64, and you just have to love how much they ultimately packed into this game and how much fun so much of it still is.

13. Blast Corps

It shouldn’t surprise you that Rare and Nintendo dominate this list, but it might surprise you to see just how high Blast Corps ranks among the greatest N64 games ever made.

What Blast Corps lacks in mechanical fluidity, it more than makes up for in design ambition and adrenaline. There’s never been another puzzle game built around clearing a path for a runaway nuclear weapon, and even if that was somehow the most popular subgenre today, Blast Corps would likely still be the king of it.

Games

Why the N64 Controller Design Was So Weird

By Matthew Byrd

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15 Hardest N64 Games of All-Time

By Matthew Byrd

12. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

There were actually a few great Star Wars games on the N64, which makes it that much more impressive that Rogue Squadron finds itself cleanly atop that particular pack.

I’d call Rogue Squadron’s sci-fi spaceship battles “simple,” but the fact that so few games have been able to replicate their brilliance means that there’s more to this one than meets the eye. While this game’s loving embrace of the Star Wars universe may just be its X-factor, I feel it’s ultimately Rogue Squadron‘s surprisingly deep missions and incredible controls that make this game so hard to top.

11. Resident Evil 2

There are a few logistical reasons you won’t find a lot of multiplatform games on this list, but even if more notable third-party games were ported to the N64, it’s doubtful they would have been able to steal the spotlight from this one.

Considered by some analysts to be one of the most technologically impressive N64 games ever made, the N64 version of Resident Evil 2 did things that shouldn’t have been possible. You could make the argument that it was the best way to experience Resident Evil 2, which means it’s one of the best ways to experience one of the best games ever made.

10. Star Fox 64

If I’m being honest, I’ve always felt that the original Star Fox was more of an impressive technological demonstration than a truly great game. It was a lot of fun, but it was also pretty clear that there was a better game at its core just waiting to burst free.

Star Fox 64 was that game. You could push aside the fact that Star Fox 64 changed gaming forever with its rumble pack support, and you’d still be left with this classic’s visually stunning action, blissful combat, incredible multiplayer modes, and brilliant controls. This is just a complete N64 experience and one of Nintendo’s best games of the era.

9. F-Zero X

One of the main reasons why Nintendo hasn’t released any F-Zero games in years is that they reportedly feel like they’ve really done everything with this series they aspired to accomplish. While the GameCube’s brilliant F-Zero GX probably has a lot to do with that belief, it has to be said that F-Zero X for the N64 arguably perfected the entire F-Zero concept.

This fast, furious, and shockingly difficult racing game left nearly every other racing game in the dust at the time when it came to pure speed. Honestly, it’s faster and more intense than most of the racing games that have been released since. With the possible exception of its successor, I don’t know if there’s ever been another arcade-style racing game that just feels as good as this one.

8. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

Again, Nintendo has never been afraid of doing things differently, but Majora’s Mask still stands as one of the company’s wildest, and potentially dangerous, ideas.

Long before time loops became a popular storytelling genre, Nintendo fans everywhere wondered why the studio was making a sequel to one of the most beloved games of all time that seemingly borrowed its core premise from the movie Groundhog Day. Not everyone loves the results, but how can you possibly deny this game the credit it deserves for ambition alone? Even if this was a more traditional Zelda game, it would be one of the best.

7. GoldenEye 007

Some say that your love of the N64 is directly related to how many people you were able to regularly play N64 games with. In the case of GoldenEye’s legendary multiplayer, there’s obviously some truth in that statement.

You know what, though? Even if GoldenEye was just its campaign, unlockables, technological achievements, and James Bond trappings, I think it might still have made this list. At a time when licensed games were mostly a joke and console FPS games were certainly a laughing matter, GoldenEye 007 felt like a bolt of lightning long before you ever discovered the joy of fragging friends until you watched the sun rise.

6. Paper Mario

To tell you the truth, I was also a little surprised to watch Paper Mario climb this high up this list. I mean, just look at some of the games it’s ahead of and standing shoulder to shoulder with. I know it’s the best RPG on N64, but was it really that good?

Well, you obviously know my answer to that question. Like Super Mario RPG before it, Paper Mario proves that the RPGs you’ll willfully commit hours of your life to don’t have to be the most complicated or “hardcore.” What Paper Mario adds to that game’s formula is its beautiful art style and quite a bit of that incredible humor we’d eventually see more of in the Mario & Luigi series. It’s more than worthy of being considered one of the best.

5. WWF No Mercy

Am I outing myself as a lifelong wrestling fan with this selection? Possibly, but No Mercy is still the best wrestling game in a console library that happens to include many of the best wrestling games ever made.

More importantly, this is still the game that modern games are trying to live up to. You could argue that some wrestling games released since No Mercy have come close, but the fact that this is still the measuring stick for an entire genre two decades after its release is an accomplishment that only a couple of other N64 games could possibly claim to match.

4. Mario Kart 64

The Mario Kart series has this way of charming people who don’t even like video games much less racing games. It’s one of the best-selling Nintendo franchises ever, and, to be honest with you, so much of what makes this series an almost otherworldly success can be traced back to Mario Kart 64.

The original Mario Kart was obviously great, but Mario Kart 64 spun it out at the starting line with its wonderful 3D courses (which are still among the best in franchise history), incredible controls, and a multiplayer mode that might just be the best on a console that’s kind of known for them. You could still play this game today and not feel the miles it has accrued.

3. Perfect Dark

It’s hard to deny the ways that GoldenEye 007 has aged over the years, and a lot of those retrospective shortcomings can certainly be applied to Perfect Dark. Whereas some of GoldenEye’s brilliance hasn’t necessarily stood the test of time, though, there are elements of Perfect Dark that I’d argue few FPS games released since have rivaled.

Said elements include Perfect Dark’s amazing AI, truly innovative weapon design, wonderful levels, complicated campaign, and a multiplayer mode bursting with customization options. Call it Rare’s victory lap if you want, but I see Perfect Dark as a case of Rare trying to hand the baton off to the next generation but finding that few were ready to really take it and run.

2. Super Mario 64

I feel like you could justify Super Mario 64’s high place atop any list of great games by saying that it did for 3D games what Super Mario Bros. did for 2D games. That is to say that it’s the most innovative and important 3D game ever made.

However, it’s almost cruel to boil this game down to its technological accomplishments. The thing that glued people to Super Mario 64 in 1996 is the same thing that makes the game so great now: its heart. This is a love letter to the very idea of gaming that so happens to be on the shortlist of titles that you’d put in a video game time capsule.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Much like Super Mario 64, it’s hardly controversial to name Ocarina of Time one of the best (or, in this case, the best) N64 games of all time. Both were entries into beloved franchises that changed game design forever and still arguably stand tall as the best in their respective series.

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So what separates Ocarina of Time? It comes down to dreams fulfilled and expectations exceeded. There’s a degree to which Ocarina of Time was the sweeping epic we dreamt of whenever someone made big promises about the future of 3D gaming. However, only the wildest dreams dared imagine an adventure this grand, this confident, and, strangely enough, this accessible. Nobody was immune to how they felt the first time they saw Ocarina of TIme. Over twenty years later, the game still possesses that ability to stun, excite, and make you fall in love with gaming all over again.

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cts-minnesota · 8 years

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New Humble Bundle Offers Collection Of Classic Star Wars Games

A new Humble Bundle collects a handful of great Star Wars games (and throws a few not-so-great ones in for good measure).

The pay what you want tier includes Knights of the Old Republic, X-Wing Alliance, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter - Balance of the Power Campaigns, and Galactic Battlegrounds Saga. The pay above the average tier (currently $10.06) includes Battlefront II, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Starfighter, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and Rebel Assault I & II. Finally, in the pay $14 or more tier, is The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, The Force Unleashed II, Rogue Squadron 3D, Shadows of the Empire, and Empire at War: Gold Pack. If you go up to $35, there is also a Star Wars shirt you can grab as well. As is the case with nearly all Humble Bundles, these are the PC versions of the game.

For our ranking of the 30 best Star Wars games, head here.

via https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/02/07/new-humble-bundle-offers-collection-of-classic-star-wars-games.aspx and www.computechtechnologyservices.com

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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PlayStation 5 Games Confirmed So Far

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Sony looks to follow-up on the historic success of the PlayStation 4 with its next-gen console, the unsurprisingly named PlayStation 5. With the PlayStation brand stronger than ever before, many people are already predicting that Sony could be in the driver’s seat heading into the next-generation of console gaming.

But it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got those games. While Sony has yet to reveal its first-party PS5 games, we actually know a few intriguing third-party AAA and indie titles coming to the new console. Could these games beat out the Xbox Series X’s confirmed list of titles?

Before we get to the full list of known PS5 titles, here are some of the major upcoming PS5 games that Sony has chosen to highlight thus far:

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Unsurprisingly, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will be a cross-generation title. Ubisoft’s next entry in this legendary gaming franchise promises to explore the exciting history of Vikings while building upon the RPG elements of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. You should expect this to be one of the year’s biggest titles, even if you maybe shouldn’t expect the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions to feature significantly improved graphics.

Astro’s Playroom

Astro’s Playroom is an intriguing 3D platformer which Sony says is designed to demonstrate and take advantage of the PS5’s signature design elements. While it remains to be seen exactly what that means, it should be noted that this appears to take place in the same universe as the PSVR title Astro Bot Rescue Mission, but VR functionality has not been confirmed for Playroom at this time.

Chorus

While many of the finer points of Chorus remain a mystery, the fact that this game is poised to evolve the space combat shooter genre is enough to get us excited. We’ll see whether Chorus can live up to the legacy of titles like the Rogue Squadron series, but everything we’ve seen so far from this project suggests it will be a dark, beautiful, and intense experience in its own right.

Control

Control is not just one of our favorite games in recent years. It’s one of the best games in the history of developer Remedy Entertainment: the studio behind Max Payne and Alan Wake. Now confirmed to be a PlayStation 5 port, those of you that did not get to experience one of the most creative and spellbinding action-adventure games of the current generation will get a second chance to do it in the next one.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is still set to debut on current-gen platforms, but developer CD Projekt Red has confirmed its intentions to port the game to next-gen platforms. While we were already looking forward to the next project from the team behind The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077‘s action-based gameplay, incredible sci-fi world, promising narrative, and celebrity star power make it one of the most ambitious and highly-anticipated games of the next generation.

Deathloop

As a kind of grindhouse take on the Groundhog’s Day concept, you can bet that Deathloop is on our radar as one of the most anticipated PS5 games on the horizon. While there’s still much that we don’t know about this ambitious title, the teases we’ve seen of it and developer Arkane’s incredible history suggest that it could just be something special.

Destiny 2

We probably don’t need to tell you what Destiny 2 is, but we’re thrilled that Bungie has confirmed that this title will make the leap to the PS5. Destiny 2 has only gotten better since launch and Bungie’s commitment to bringing the game to next-gen consoles also signals its commitment to sticking with the growth of this title rather than simply jumping to Destiny 3.

Destruction AllStars

Somewhere between Twisted Metal and Rocket League sits Destruction AllStars. This competitive destruction derby game features a variety of colorful characters, cars, and combat arenas that lend this title a distinctive identity despite the relative lack of information about the project revealed thus far. We’re certainly excited to learn more about what seems to be one of the PS5’s early exclusives.

Dirt 5

The Dirt series has been a surprisingly solid racing franchise for quite some time now, but the reason we’re especially excited for Dirt 5 on the PS5 is that Dirt games have traditionally looked incredible. Despite being a cross-generational title, this game could be an early preview of the power of next-gen technology.

Demon’s Souls Remake

As a pure remake of the 2009 original, Demon’s Souls is built from the ground up to take advantage of the PlayStation 5’s hardware. While the game will undoubtedly look incredible, we really wonder how developer Bluepoint Games will update Demon’s Souls best (and worst) concepts. In any case, expect this remake to live up to the series’ infamous legacy of difficulty.

Far Cry 6

Far Cry 6 casts players into the role of a revolutionist on the fictional island of Yara. It’s the player’s job to help lead the battle against a violent dictator named Anton Castillo (notably played by Breaking Bad‘s Giancarlo Esposito).In many ways, Far Cry 6 looks like it will stick fairly close to the formula that the franchise has established in recent years. Whether or not that’s a bad thing depends on your perspective, but we’re curious to discover whether this series has any surprises up its sleeve.

Fortnite

It’s not exactly shocking that Fortnite is coming to the PlayStation 5. It’s one of the world’s most popular games after all. But it’s nice to know that fans won’t have to keep their PS4s around just to play the game. We imagine that Epic will remain committed to Fortnite for quite some time to come, even if the game’s more humble graphics means that it probably won’t benefit much from next-gen technology.

Ghostwire: Tokyo

With the surprisingly excellent Evil Within series, developer Tango Gameworks established themselves as one of the most exciting names in horror gaming. They look to further that legacy with Ghostwire: Tokyo. While much of this game remains a mystery its bizarre mix of action and supernatural storytelling leaves us wondering what weird and wonderful directions this PS5 project will explore.

Godfall

Aside from holding the unique distinction of being one of the first PS5 games confirmed before the PS5 itself was really being officially talked about, Godfall happens to be one of the most intriguing PS5 games on the horizon. Described as a “looter-slasher,” Godfall is poised to be a kind of action-RPG that just may stand as one of the PS5’s most desirable early exclusives.

Gods and Monsters

It’s been a little while since we’ve heard more about Gods and Monsters, but Ubisoft plans to release the game in Holiday 2020, just in time for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. That’s good news considering that Gods and Monsters is positioned to be a Legend of Zelda-like adventure from a studio that’s been known to make some pretty incredible grand-scale adventures of its own over the years.

Gothic

THQ Nordic confirmed its intentions to remake Gothic for the PS5 as well as other current-gen platforms. Infamous for its ambitious ideas and compelling world, the original Gothic may have been a flawed gem that flew somewhat under the radar, but that actually makes it the perfect candidate for a remake. We’re interested to see much more of this project.

Gran Turismo 7

The Gran Turismo series returns as Gran Turismo 7 looks to serve as one of the PS5’s most notable visual stunners. While recent Gran Turismo titles have raised questions regarding whether or not the racing simulator’s best days are behind it, we fully suspect that the GT team will bring out their biggest guns in order to get this series back on track.

Grand Theft Auto 5

Rockstar’s unbelievably successful fifth entry into the Grand Theft Auto franchise will carry over into the next generation of gaming consoles. With Grand Theft Auto 6 likely on the very distant horizon, we look forward to being able to play through GTA 5‘s incredible campaign (and endless online mode) on the PlayStation 5.

Hitman 3

The Hitman franchise has always been one of the best action/adventure experiences in gaming history, but the recent reboot of the franchise has certainly cemented its legacy as one a truly special series. That’s why we’re thrilled to see Hitman return in this incredible upcoming next-gen sequel. If recent installments are any indication, this could be the best Hitman yet.

Horizon Forbidden West

Rumors have been circulating for quite some time regarding the PlayStation 5 debut of the Horizon series, but nothing could have prepared us for our first look at Horizon Forbidden West. This long-awaited sequel looks to further the epic journey that started in the original game while establishing a legacy of its own as a next-gen standout.

Madden 21

We’re not exactly stunned that EA intends to release Madden 21 for the PS5, and we don’t expect the PS5 version of this game to look significantly different from the current-gen model. What we’re really interested in seeing, though, is whether or not this edition of Madden finds a way to separate itself from recent entries.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

While we certainly hoped that Insomniac would eventually make that Spider-Man game starring Miles Morales that they teased at the end of Spider-Man for PS4, we didn’t quite expect that project to be one of the PS5’s early standouts. As long as this game retains the incredible storytelling and quick gameplay as its predecessor, you can expect it to live up to the legacy of this legendary character.

NBA 2K21

The NBA 2K series has been the definitive name in video game basketball simulations for quite a few years now. The franchise will look to continue that legacy into the next-generation with NBA 2K21. We’re still waiting to get a better glimpse of this title’s gameplay, but early footage suggests that it will take full advantage of next-gen power.

Outriders

Developer People Can Fly has long been one of the most exciting action studios in the world, so you can bet that we’re thrilled to see Outriders as one of the titles coming to the PS5. This co-op shooter looks a bit more ambitious than previous People Can Fly titles like Bulletstorm, but as long as it maintains the studio’s brand of high-octane action, we’re sure this will end up being one of the most notable early PS5 games.

Project Athia

Project Athia is certainly one of the most mysterious PS5 games on the horizon. We know it’s published by Square Enix who describe it as a kind of “other-worldly adventure,” but the details concerning its plot and gameplay are essentially non-existent at this time. Regardless, you should expect this to be one of the PS5’s early visual standouts.

Rainbow Six Quarantine

Rainbow Six Quarantine is a somewhat odd spin-off for the military-focused Rainbow Six series. This sci-fi, co-op, PvE shooter will see teams of three do battle against mysterious monsters via a combat system that looks somewhat similar to Rainbow Six Siege. This has the potential to be an incredibly fun cooperative experience, so be sure to keep an eye on it.

Rainbow Six Siege

Speaking of Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft has confirmed that its team-based online shooter will be coming to PS5. Considering that Rainbow Six Siege has steadily turned into one of the best competitive shooters on the market over the last few years, it’ll be fascinating to see whether or not the next-generation marks a bold new era for the Siege experience.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

The Ratchet and Clank series has long been one of the most tragically unsung series in gaming history, but we suspect that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart may help to change all of that. Not only does Rift Apart feature some incredible interdimensional gameplay and plot ideas, but it’s primed to be one of the early premiere games for Sony’s new console.

Resident Evil Village

The incredible Resident Evil 7 got this legendary franchise back on the path of true horror. Resident Evil Village looks to continue that legacy with an installment that brings to mind the somewhat intimate isolation of horror films like Midsommar. What we’ve seen of Resident Evil Village thus far suggests that it could end up being the scariest Resident Evil yet.

Returnal

In Returnal, you play an astronaut exploring an alien planet. As we see in the trailer, your character appears to die at some point. However, it appears that you will be revived after each death with the twist being that you’ll wake up on a different planet each time. We’d love to know more about this project, but we’re certainly fascinated by the potential of that premise.

Sackboy A Big Adventure

Hilarious name aside, Sackboy A Big Adventure may just prove to be the kind of cutesy 3D platformer that the PS5 could use early on. This spin-off of the Little Big Planet series reminds us of games like the recent Yoshi titles in the best way possible. Its bright, colorful, and loaded with what appears to be incredible early examples of exceptional level design.

Scarlet Nexus

Initially revealed as an Xbox Series X title, Bandai Namco has confirmed that Scarlet Nexus will also come to the PS5. This fast-paced action title sports an anime aesthetic that is not only visually striking in its own right but could really shine on the PS5. If you want to see what kind of gameplay speed next-gen consoles are capable of, this could be one of your best early bets.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

A stealth-based Lord of the Rings game starring the twisted and diabolical Gollum? Yes, please. Rumors of this project have been floating around for quite some time now, and early screenshots and footage of the game suggest that this is shaping up to be one of the most promising video game titles set in the Lord of the Rings universe since Shadow of Mordor.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2

We were excited to learn that the cult classic PC RPG Vampire: The Masquerade would finally get a sequel, and we’re thrilled to hear that Bloodlines 2 will be making the leap to the PS5. Along with being one of the most promising RPGs on the horizon from a gameplay perspective, Bloodlines 2 has the potential to be one of the best looking early next-gen projects.

Warframe

Warframe started as a relatively simple free-to-play Destiny-like action title. It wasn’t much, but it was free and it was fun. In recent years, though, Warframe has grown into one of the best-supported, most fascinating, and most ambitious free-to-play games in the world. It will be fascinating to see how this game continues to evolve over the course of the next generation.

Watch Dogs: Legion

Everything we’ve seen of Watch Dogs: Legion thus far suggests that it will be the most ambitious Watch Dogs title yet. This title promises the ability to take control of nearly every NPC in its open-world and enjoy the unique stories, personalities, and adventures they have to offer. A game of that scope sounds perfect for the PS5 and its promising SSD technology.

WRC 9

If the Dirt series doesn’t quite do it for you and you can’t wait until the next Gran Turismo game, then WRC 9 may just be the next-gen racer you’re looking for. This rally racing game promises to use the PS5’s incredible power to offer a fast-paced and stunning next-gen racing experience.

All PS5 Games Confirmed So Far

Finally, here’s a complete list of the confirmed PS5 titles so far. Not all of these games have available release dates, but each has been referred to as a game that will appear on the PS5 at some point. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Astro’s Playroom Battlefield 6 Bugsnax Chivalry 2 Chorus Control Cris Tales Cygni: All Guns Blazing Death Loop Demon’s Souls Destiny 2 Destruction AllStars DiRT 5 Dying Light 2 Far Cry 6 FIFA 21 Fortnite Ghostwire Tokyo Godfall Gods and Monsters Goodbye Volcano High Gothic Remake Gran Turismo 7 GTA 5 Heavenly Bodies Hitman III Horizon Forbidden West Hyper Scape In Sound Mind Jett: The Far Shore Kena: Bridge of Spirits Little Devil Inside Madden NFL 21 Marvel’s Avengers Maquette MicroMan Metal Hellsinger Moonray NBA 2K21 Nth^0 Infinity Reborn Observer (System Redux) Oddworld Soulstorm Outriders Pragmata Project Athia Psyhotel Quantum Error Rainbow Six Quarantine Rainbow Six Siege Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Redo! Enhanced Edition Resident Evil Village Returnal Sackboy: A Big Adventure Scarlet Nexus Solar Ash Soulborn Spider-Man: Miles Morales Stray The Lord of the Rings: Gollum The Pathless Tribes of Midgard Ultimate Fishing Simulator 2 Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong Warframe Watch Dogs: Legion Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood Worms Rumble WRC 9

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