Tag Archives: Single-player video games

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Resident Evil 4 Remake’s Raingate, Explained

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This is the rain in question. What do you think?
Gif: Game Informer / Capcom / Kotaku

First, there was Spider-Man’s infamous Puddlegate. Then there were the not-so-watery streets of Cyberpunk 2077. Now it seems video game fans’ next watery, pre-release controversy involves the heavy rain seen in some early gameplay of the Resident Evil 4 remake. Some think it looks as bad as the awful-looking rain the GTA Trilogy remasters. Others are convinced it’s just video compression. And remember: None of them have actually played the game yet.

Rumored for some time, Resident Evil 4 was officially announced by Capcom back in June 2022. This new remake will update the game’s controls and combat, while keeping the same basic story and characters. Once again players will play as Leon as he travels to a rural part of Western Europe to save the President’s daughter and gets caught up in a whole lotta campy, horrific shenanigans. But based on newly released gameplay by Game Informer, some Resident Evil fans seem to think Leon’s biggest threat won’t be giant monsters or infected villagers, but lackluster rain.

Across Reddit and Twitter, you can find many players who think the in-game rain looks awful in the upcoming remake. While I’m not sure who was the first person to share these concerns online, they’ve quickly spread around the community. Some have even suggested the rain looks as bad as the infamously horrendous rain seen in the critically thrashed Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: Definitive Edition. That rain was so bad looking that it made the game nearly unplayable during storms and was eventually improved by the devs via a post-release patch.

Anyway, here’s the remade RE4’s rain that’s causing such a kerfuffle:

Capcom / Game Informer

I’ll fully admit that I watched this footage twice when Game Informer first posted the video and didn’t think anything of the rain. But even in the comments on YouTube, you can find people worried about how intense and distracting it is.

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Kotaku has contacted Capcom about the weather in the upcoming remake.

Others think people are being too nitpicky and suggest that the real problem isn’t the rain but YouTube’s awful video compression. I’m inclined to think YouTube’s compression is definitely not helping this rain look good, but I can also see how some might find the large and distinct white drops of water to be too much.

Of course, this being the internet and gamers, some people are going too far and suggesting the devs are lazy or that this is a sign the entire game will be a giant, rushed “cash grab.” That is completely silly and asinine. Remember: None of us have played the game, which isn’t even finished yet.

Resident Evil 4 is due out March 24, 2023 on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Maybe it should include a rain intensity slider.



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Resident Evil 4 Remake Adds Sidequests, Makes Other Changes

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Leon can, in fact, block Chainsaw Man (Capcom edition)‘s overhead. Sadly, it comes at a price.
Screenshot: Capcom / Kotaku

In a new Game Informer cover story, Capcom detailed some of the changes that the hotly anticipated remake of Resident Evil 4 is making to the original, hugely influential horror game.

One of the major changes coming to the RE4 remake revolves around how Ashley Graham (not the supermodel) works in scenes when protagonist Leon S. Kennedy must escort and protect her. In the original RE4, players had to keep a watchful eye over Ashley’s health bar and ensure enemies didn’t carry her away. Ashley desperately, and frequently, screams out Leon’s name the instant players fail to do any of the aforementioned tasks.

In the remake, Ashley no longer has a health bar. Should President Graham’s Dumbo-eared daughter take too much damage while Leon attempts to escort her safely away from Las Plagas, she’ll enter a downed state and need to be revived, IGN reports. 

According to a Capcom representative, this change to Ashley’s gameplay mechanic was made to make her “feel more like a natural companion and less like a second health bar to babysit.”

Read More: All The Changes We Spotted In The New Resident Evil 4 Remake Trailers

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Another change coming to RE4’s remake is weapon durability, specifically for Leon’s combat knife. As seen at the end of last October’s extended gameplay trailer, Leon’s trusty knife being capable of parrying a chainsaw comes at a hefty cost. Instead of toting around “ol’ reliable” throughout the entirety of the RE4 remake to open wooden boxes, chip away at zombies, and conserve ammo, Leon’s knife will deteriorate over time, but players can have multiple knives in their inventory, which still takes the form of Leon’s iconic attache case.

Read More: Someone Finally Made The Inventory Briefcase From Resident Evil 4 A Puzzle Game

Side-quests are also making their way to the RE4 remake. According to IGN, blue flyers scattered about the game let you acquire optional tasks you can complete as side-quests. Lastly, the Game Informer cover story mentions that quick-time events, a frequent element of the original RE4, have effectively been removed, though this aspect of the remake had been mentioned in earlier interviews as well.

“I’d say there are ‘barely any’ QTEs. Different people have different definitions of what a QTE is, so while I can’t tell you that there aren’t any at all, I can say that there aren’t prompts to press buttons mid-cutscene,” producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi told IGN in a prior interview.

Resident Evil 4 (Remake) is slated to release on March 24 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.



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Technology

The Masters Of Stealth Tactics Are Back With A New Pirate Game

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Image: Mimimi

There are few studios out there on top of their respective games like Mimimi are. From Shadow Tactics to Desperadoes 3, they’ve proven themselves the master of the modern stealth tactics game, and in 2023 they’re back with an all-new game, this time about pirates.

This is Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, which is due out towards the end of the year. It won’t take long in the trailers below to see some familiar sights: the mix of real-time action combined with stealth tactics and special powers is one Mimimi have been perfecting over the past decade, and after dabbling with some magic in their last game they’re fully committed to it now.

Here’s the game’s reveal trailer:

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew – Cinematic Reveal Trailer

And, more helpfully, here’s the game’s debut gameplay trailer:

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew – First Gameplay Trailer

Aside from the obvious thematic shift, from one colourful era of history to another, this will all look very familiar to fans of Shadow Tactics and Desperadoes 3. Which, let’s be clear, is a very good thing. Those two games have come about as close as games can come to perfecting a genre, so Shadow Gambit will be messing with things around the edges of the Mimimi experience, not making wholesale changes.

Shadow Gambit will be out at the end of 2023 on PC, Xbox and PlayStation. And if you think I’ve been more hyperbolic than usual in talking about these games, know that I have good reason. Here’s how I wrapped up my impressions of Desperadoes 3:

I can’t speak highly enough of Desperados 3. It’s almost the perfect stealth experience, tense but not terrifying, empowering but not easy (it actually gets really tough in parts), and if this is the pedigree that Mimimi are building for themselves in this space, I can’t wait to see what comes next.

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Twitter Has A Lot Of Useless Video Game Knowledge

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Image: Capcom

It’s right there in the Bible—ask, and it will be given to you. It’s also right there on gaming Twitter, where the small gaming podcast Super Pod Saga posed an innocent question on January 15 and people showed up to respond in droves: “What is the most useless piece of video game knowledge you know?”

Apparently, there are a lot of people that think a lot of useless thoughts about video games. Who knew? In the week and a half since posting, Super Pod Saga received over ten thousand responses to their tweet. But a lot of it, I’d say, isn’t necessarily useless, but essential.

Take this response about action-adventure series Devil May Cry, for example: “Dante and Vergil have an insane healing factor that essentially heals as the damage is being done, so no wounds or scars. Due to this, they’re likely uncircumcised.”

Tell me honestly. What was I supposed to do if I had never read that? Never know whether or not Dante and Vergil are circumcised? Be forced to wander the Earth, alone forever in my confusion? Can you even imagine that?

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Or what about this: “In Xenoblade 3, all characters in the game’s files are listed with a number for gender. Zero is male, One is female; however, the character Juniper is listed as two. Furthermore, in Xenoblade 2, the character Roc’s gender is listed as four. Thus, there are at least five genders in Xenoblade.” I mean, that’s just inspirational.

Ah, the breeze of womanhood! Dinosaurs!

Kotaku staffers have been holding onto their own niche video game info, too. I know this, because I begged them to tell me in pursuit of self-actualization.

“The li’l fire breathing dinosaur from Super Mario World is named after the singer in Nine Inch Nails,” social media editor Jeb Biggart told me. “That feels pretty useless.”

Yes, great stuff. More, give me more.

“In the Halo 2 level Quarantine, Flood [parasitic creatures] can be seen driving around in Warthogs/tanks/etc. This is the only time in the series where they do this, and it’s really weird,” staff writer Zack Zwiezen said.

“The music in NES Back to the Future, a terribly obnoxious, grating repetitive theme that bears no immediately apparent resemblance to anything is actually a wildly sped up version of the hit song from the movie, ‘The Power of Love’ by Huey Lewis and the News,” said managing editor Carolyn Petit. “Perhaps because they programmed the music, but then found out they didn’t have the rights to the song, so they just sped it way up. I do not know the reason for this.”

Thank you all. My power grows. My mind expands. My trivia senses are tingling.

Now, what’s your favorite bit of random video game knowledge? Let it out, it’s for my health.

 



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Technology

Marvel’s Avengers Will Die With Spider-Man Stuck On PlayStation

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Image: Marvel / Crystal Dynamics

Late last week, Square Enix announced that its beleaguered 2020 live-service game, Marvel’s Avengers, will no longer receive new content or major updates after March 31. And all official support for the game will end on September 30, 2023, with digital sales ending on that date too. While you’ll still be able to play it offline and online with friends after these dates, it’s effectively game over for the troubled online action game. Yet, even in death, developer Crystal Dynamics just confirmed that the character of Spider-Man will remain exclusive to the PS4 and PS5 versions.

This saga began when, shortly ahead of the release of Marvel’s Avengers, Crystal Dynamics announced that Spider-Man would be added to the game at a later date. However, the famous web-slinger would not be coming to the Xbox or PC versions. Instead, only PS4 (and later PS5) players would have access to the character. It took longer than expected, but eventually, in November 2021 Spider-Man popped up in the PlayStation versions. At the time fans theorized that it was because Spider-Man was owned by Sony and therefore Spidey was only on PlayStation. (That isn’t the case, as Sony merely owns film rights to the character.) But since then, the famous superhero has appeared in Midnight Suns across all platforms. So it’s not like Spider-Man can only exist on PlayStation consoles.

And yet, Crystal Dynamics confirmed in a blog post on January 20 that Spider-Man will still not be coming to Xbox or PC. What a shame! Even as the failed live-service game dies, none of Spidey’s corporate overlords can agree to let him swing free across all platforms for the few Avengers players out there still enjoying the game.

Marvel / PlayStation

Kotaku contacted Marvel, PlayStation, Square Enix, Embracer Group, and Crystal Dynamics for comment, but didn’t hear back before publication.

I already know people in the comments or quote retweets will claim Sony completely owns Spider-Man (it doesn’t) or that Sony can’t legally allow the character to appear on other platforms (it can). Yet he’s in Midnight Suns, a game released on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. He’s in mobile games released across iOS, Android, and PC, too.

So it’s totally doable to have Spidey show up on other consoles if the people pulling the strings, cutting the deals, and making the contracts can agree to it. But apparently nobody cares enough about Avengers and its community to muster one last gesture of goodwill for players and let the web-slingin’ hero show up on Xbox and PC. If you want to play the complete version of the game after support ends in September, it seems you’ll have to own a PlayStation. Say it with me once again: Console-exclusive DLC sucks.

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16 Of The Best Adventures Games Of The Last Decade Are Just $10

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Screenshot: Wadjet Eye Games

Remember those early days of Humble Bundles? When every newly-announced deal felt so essential, and literally millions of dollars would be raised for charity each time? It still happens occasionally, like last year’s Stand With Ukraine bundle that raised an incredible $20 million for charities working in the country, but over the decade the thrill has certainly worn off. But seeing one of my favorite developer/publishers, Wadjet Eye Games, having a deal on the site, reminded me of those times.

Wadjet Eye, the New York-based indie publisher and developer that’s mostly made of Dave Gilbert, is responsible for many of the best adventure games in the last sixteen years. From its self-developed projects like the incredible Unavowed and The Blackwell series, to those it’s published like Gemini Rue and Shardlight, the name has generally been a byword for super adventures presented with a ‘90s vibe. As it happens, all of those mentioned games, along with nine more, are included in the bundle, all for $10.

That’s a crazy ol’ bargain, and if you’ve wandered away from point-and-click adventures in recent years, it’s an excellent way back in. You wouldn’t believe what good stuff there is to find being made in the Adventure Game Studio engine, and Wadjet Eye’s are generally the best of them. The other games featured are Strangeland, Primordia, Technobabylon, Resonance, all six Blackwell games, and Gilbert’s first game, The Shivah. The chosen charity is JDRF, which raises money for type-1 diabetes research.

It’s interesting, and sad, to note how much of Humble’s sheen has come off, given that despite being live for five days, this bundle has sold just shy of 9,000 copies, with $11,800 raised for JDRF at the time of writing. It’s obviously still great to see that money going somewhere good, but it’s a trickle compared to the company’s previous waterfalls.

Of course, in the years since Humble’s heyday as a bundle seller (the company is owned by IGN now, and is a very successful indie publisher), a fair amount of good faith was lost. A very misguided decision to limit the amount of your chosen payment that could go to charity was announced, backtracked on, then re-instituted anyway.

Thankfully, right now, you can redirect your money where you see fit, albeit with an obligatory 15% going to Humble. (Meanwhile, there’s no minimum amount for developers or good cause—astonishingly you can adjust the sliders to give every penny to Humble, with none going to the people who made the games!) Also, the real selling points of genuine “pay what you want” disappeared a long while back, with minimum costs now often totalling enough that some deals don’t feel like bargains.

Still, this one definitely is! Grab it!

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Technology

New Assassin’s Creed Is Smaller Because Past Games Got Too Big

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Image: Ubisoft

The last few Assassin’s Creed titles have been gigantic games that can easily take over a hundred hours to fully complete, with huge maps crowded with POIs and tons of side quests to distract you from the main story. According to Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the upcoming spin-off, is smaller and more “intimate” because fans grew tired of these giant RPGs. And the devs were more than happy to go in this direction with the latest game in the franchise.

While I’ll be the first to say that modern Assassin’s Creed games have been a lot of fun, I’ll also admit that recent entries in the series like Odyssey and Valhalla have become far too big and bloated. More recent Assassin’s Creed games, starting with Origins, have evolved the franchise from a series of smaller, stealth games set in large cities into a collection of massive open-world RPGs often filled with hundreds of quests, side quests, collectibles, and places to explore. And if you, like me, long for a smaller, more focused Assassin’s Creed, well, we aren’t alone.

In an interview with GamesRadar, Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s creative director Stéphane Boudon explained that while Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla were all “great games” that let players “live an epic journey” it was clear that those players were longing for something different and smaller.

“Amongst our fans, we started hearing the desire for a character-driven story, focused on the core pillars of the first ACs in a more intimate scale,” explained Boudon. “It resonates with us as well, as developers, and this was the starting point of the project.”

Read More: How Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Creators Snuck In Connections To Older Games

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Boudon also said that while Mirage came about from a “convergence of several inputs” the biggest driver behind the upcoming spin-off’s smaller scale and focus on narrative came from what the community was asking for after years of huge RPGs.

Further, Mirage pays homage to the OG Assassin’s Creed game starring Altair. Mirage is set in a similar part of the world—the Middle East during the 13th century—and features actual assassins and not proto-assassins as seen in recent games.

I think all of this is a great direction to take the franchise. I want to keep playing these games, but after Valhalla, I’m not sure I need yet another 200-hour epic RPG. This could really help mix things up and keep the franchise feeling fresh and fun. I hope this is the start of a new trend where we see a mix of bigger, open-world entries (Valhalla, Origins) and smaller games focused on stealth. The franchise can support this mix and it would help avoid burning out fans who play every new game AKA me.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is set to release sometime this year for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

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Final Fantasy 16 Producer Suggests PC Players Just ‘Buy A PS5’

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“Just buy a PS5? What, is it hard?”
Screenshot: Square Enix

Final Fantasy XVI, the upcoming installment in the long-running JRPG series, drops on June 22 as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. That exclusivity is a bit of a bummer as other Final Fantasy games, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake, were also available on PC. And the last mainline entry, Final Fantasy XV, was multiplatform. Unfortunately, at least for now, the new Final Fantasy game will remain on PlayStation 5 only, according to the game’s producer.

Producer Naoki Yoshida, colloquially known as Yoshi-P, was interviewed at a Mahjong tournament over the weekend, where he was whether Final Fantasy XVI would come to PC, something Square Enix confirmed when it revealed the game almost two years ago. However, despite that detail found in the footnote text at the bottom of the trailer, Yoshi-P said the release information is wrong, according to a “rough translation” by the Japanese gaming news Twitter account Genki_JPN. In fact, there may not be a PC version coming at all, as Yoshi-P is apparently suggesting folks go out and buy a PS5 instead.

“Nobody said a word about a PC version releasing,” Yoshi-P said. “Why is it like a PC version is releasing six months later? Don’t worry about that, buy a PS5! Sorry, I went overboard. We did our best so please look forward to it.”

It’s interesting Yoshi-P is purporting that a PC version isn’t planned. Scrubbing through some old Final Fantasy XVI trailers, such as the “Awakening” one from September 2020, it was definitely stated that the game is “not available on other platforms for a limited time after release on PS5,” suggesting it could possibly hit other consoles in the future at the very least. Such was the case with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, where the “limited time” window was about a year. However, all recent marketing for the game, from newer trailers to its official website, now makes no mention of it coming to PC. This is unfortunate considering other Final Fantasy games are on more platforms than just PlayStation and the fact that Sony’s newest console can still be difficult to find. But in the grand scheme of things, knowing how deep Square Enix’s relationship with PlayStation is, it’s not surprising. At least the exclusivity deal should take advantage of the PlayStation 5’s hardware so that there’s no loading.

Kotaku reached out to Square Enix for clarification but did not receive a reply before publication.

Alongside sticking firmly to PlayStation consoles, Final Fantasy XVI has been rated mature for certain types of content featured in the game. Specifically, according to a translation on the Brazilian Ministério da Justiça website, for hate crimes (yikes) and sex scenes (nice).

 



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30 Indie Games You Should Know About Releasing In 2023

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PlayStation

Thirsty Suitors is a cross between Scott Pilgrim’s battles with evil exes, stylish arcade skateboarding, and cooking segments all portrayed through a South Asian cultural lens. Outerloop Games’ RPG stars Jala as she returns to an old town with old flames, and frames their reconciliation through turn-based battles where the simple act of talking to each other is pumped up to ridiculous levels. There’s even a stage in which Jala enters a dream world where her exes appear as powerful, distorted versions of their own self-concept. Think Persona 5 but with fewer criminals. Jala explores her old town on a skateboard (more Jet Set Radio than Tony Hawk), and when she’s home with her family, she cooks with her mother in over-the-top, campy fashion. Thirsty Suitors portrays all of its storylines in this way, but there’s a grounded humanity at its core that will be exciting to see when the game launches on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch.

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Capcom Shuts Down Popular Resident Evil Fan Remakes

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Image: Capcom

The developers behind fan remakes of Resident Evil and Resident Evil Code: Veronica have announced that development on both projects has ceased after Capcom allegedly contacted them and asked the developers to cancel the project.

1996’s Resident Evil was the start of modern “survival horror” games, and 2000’s Resident Evil Code: Veronica, its third sequel, first came out for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000. Capcom soon ported an updated version to PlayStation 2 and GameCube and then created HD versions for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Resident Evil 4 producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi recently confirmed to IGN that there were no plans for a new Code: Veronica remake. Two years ago, Briins Croft, Matt Croft, and the animator DarkNemesisUmbrella started their own remake projects for both games.

In a video announcing the Code: Veronica project’s cancellation, Briins Croft said that 90 percent of the Code: Veronica fan remake used existing assets from Capcom’s recent “Remake” games, such as 3D models, animations, and textures. The fans released an initial Code: Veronica demo back in June 2021, and planned to put out a much more substantial one in the beginning of 2023.

On December 23, Briins Croft announced in the projects’ Discord server that Capcom had sent them two cease-and-desist emails. One was “very kind” and inquired about where the animations and models had come from. The second was “hostile with a more aggressive tone.” Kotaku reached out to Croft to request a copy of the emails. He did not send the emails, but told Kotaku that Capcom started asking about the project on December 12.

The fan developers believed that Capcom canceled their unofficial remakes for being too visible and official-looking. “[The Code: Veronica remake] was going to be free, so we weren’t doing anyone any harm,” Croft said in the cancellation announcement video. The publisher seemed to disagree. Capcom allegedly cited copyright factors and licensing agreements as reasons why the project couldn’t proceed.

There’s been public speculation that the project was targeted for accepting financial donations via Kofi and PayPal. While they did accept such donations, the developers have refuted it as the reason for the project’s cancellation in both Discord and via an RT on their Twitter account. Kotaku reached out to Capcom to ask about its policies on fan projects, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

“I was personally a bit surprised by Capcom’s decision. But hey, we were using [their] toys to create a free game, which was already creating a lot of visibility,” said Croft in the video. “So it’s okay. We can understand the cancellation.”

Read More: Remastering Resident Evil Games Kept This Indie Developer From Giving Up

The developers’ announcements in their Discord were significantly less genial. “[Capcom] canceled it out of pure evil, since there are no signs that an official Code: Veronica is coming from them,” Briins wrote on the server. He also posted a meme that compared Capcom to Nintendo, which has a reputation for enforcing their copyrights aggressively.

The team will no longer be working on the Resident Evil remakes, but they intend to continue developing games. “We will continue a new project that will have a story inspired by Code: Veronica but without copyright problems.”



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