gaming – Page 5

Sega is delisting 60 classic games from Steam, so now’s the time to grab them

ecco the dolphin, gaming, Sega, Sega Dreamcast, Sega Genesis, sega saturn, steam / Kris Guyer / November 7, 2024

Sega has put dozens of its Master System, Genesis, Saturn, and other console titles onto modern game stores over the years. But, like that Dreamcast controller stashed in your childhood garage, they’re about to disappear—and getting them back will cost you a nostalgia tax.

Those who have purchased any of the more than 60 games listed by Sega from Steam, Xbox, Nintendo’s Switch store, and the PlayStation store will still have them after 11: 59 pm Pacific time on Dec. 26. But after that, for reasons that Sega does not make explicit, they will be “delisted and unavailable.” Titles specific to the Nintendo Switch Online “Expansion Pack” subscription will remain.

As PC Gamer has suggested, and which makes the most sense, this looks like Sega is getting ready to offer up new “classics” collections on these storefronts. Sega previously rearranged its store shelves to pull Sonic games from online stores and then offer up Sonic Origins. The title underwhelmed Ars at the time and managed to pack in some DLC pitches.

Sega already offers a few bundles and collections in Steam, like the Mega Drive and Genesis Classics and Dreamcast Collection. As with individual titles, buyers will retain access to them, even after Sega comes back around with new bundles.

First-person RPG screenshot showing a character named — *Shining in the Darkness* might be the turn-based retro RPG missing from your collection (for 99 cents). Credit: Sega

So if you’ve felt like you wanted to reclaim some Sega moments now, piecemeal, while you still can, the Ars writers can suggest a few places to look. These are links to the Steam store, and are mostly Windows-only, though they can often work through Proton on Linux or Steam Deck, and some work with older mac OS versions. Xbox has a smaller list, while PlayStation and Nintendo offer only the Mega Drive Classics at the moment.

Some obvious classics: Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and Ecco the Dolphin
Quirkier picks from Kyle Orland: Space Channel 5 Part 2, Toejam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron
An unexpected puzzle hit: Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
Benj Edward’s Shining RPG selections: Shining Force, Shining Force II, Shining in the Darkness
My “Minimum of 300 hours in this” choice: Virtua Fighter 2

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The PS5 Pro’s biggest problem is that the PS5 is already very good

Features, gaming / Paul Patrick / November 6, 2024

For $700, I was hoping for a much larger leap in visual impact.

The racing stripe makes it faster. Credit: Kyle Orland

In many ways, the timing of Sony’s 2016 launch of the PS4 Pro couldn’t have been better. The slightly upgraded version of 2013’s PlayStation 4 came at a time when a wave of 4K TVs was just beginning to crest in the form of tens of millions of annual sales in the US.

Purchasing Sony’s first-ever “mid-generation” console upgrade in 2016 didn’t give original PS4 owners access to any new games, a fact that contributed to us calling the PS4 Pro “a questionable value proposition” when it launched. Still, many graphics-conscious console gamers were looking for an excuse to use the extra pixels and HDR colors on their new 4K TVs, and spending hundreds of dollars on a stopgap console years before the PS5 served that purpose well enough.

Fast-forward to today and the PS5 Pro faces an even weaker value proposition. The PS5, after all, has proven more than capable of creating excellent-looking games that take full advantage of the 4K TVs that are now practically standard in American homes. With 8K TVs still an extremely small market niche, there isn’t anything akin to what Sony’s Mike Somerset called “the most significant picture-quality increase probably since black and white went to color” when talking about 4K TV in 2016.

Front view of the PS5 Pro. Note the complete lack of a built-in disc drive on the only model available. Kyle Orland

Instead, Sony says that spending $700 on a PS5 Pro has a decidedly more marginal impact—namely, helping current PS5 gamers avoid having to choose between the smooth, 60 fps visuals of “Performance” mode and the resolution-maximizing, graphical effects-laden “Fidelity” mode in many games. The extra power of the PS5 Pro, Sony says, will let you have the best of both worlds: full 4K, ray-traced graphics and 60 fps at the same time.

While there’s nothing precisely wrong with this value proposition, there’s a severe case of diminishing returns that comes into play here. The graphical improvements between a “Performance mode” PS5 game and a “Performance Pro mode” PS5 game are small enough, in fact, that I often found it hard to reliably tell at a glance which was which.

Is it just me, or does the Ps5 Pro look like a goofy puppet from this angle? The sloped mouth, the PS logo eye… you see it, right? Kyle Orland

The biggest problem with the PS5 Pro, in other words, is that the original PS5 is already too good.

Smooth operator

In announcing the PS5 Pro in September, Sony’s Mark Cerny mentioned that roughly three-quarters of PS5 owners opt for Performance mode over Fidelity mode when offered the choice on a stock PS5. It’s not hard to see why. Research shows that the vast majority of people can detect a distinct decrease in flickering or juddery animation when the frames-per-second counter is cranked up from (Fidelity mode’s) 30 fps to (Performance mode’s) 60 fps.

The extra visual smoothness is especially important in any reflex-heavy game, where every millisecond of reaction time between your eyes and your thumbs can have a dramatic impact. That reaction advantage can extend well past 60 fps, as PC gamers know all too well.

But the other reason that Performance mode is so overwhelmingly popular among PS5 players, I’d argue, is that you don’t really have to give up too much to get that frame rate-doubling boost. In most games, hopping from Fidelity mode to Performance means giving up a steady 4K image for either a (nicely upscaled) 1440p image or “Dynamic 4K” resolution (i.e., 4K that sometimes temporarily drops down lower to maintain frame rates). While some gamers swear that this difference is important to a game’s overall visual impact, most players will likely struggle to even notice that resolution dip unless they’re sitting incredibly close to a very large screen.

For the PS5 Pro, Sony is marketing “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution,” its buzzword for an AI-driven upscaling feature that adds further clarity and detail to scenes. Sony’s original announcement of “Super Resolution” heavily used zoomed-in footage to highlight the impact of this feature on distant details. That’s likely because without that level of zoom, the effect of this resolution bump is practically unnoticeable.

Tracing those rays

The other visual upgrade often inherent in a PS5 game’s Fidelity mode is support for ray-tracing, wherein the system tracks individual light rays for more accurate reflections and light scattering off of simulated objects. Having ray-tracing enabled can sometimes lead to striking visual moments, such as when you see Spider-Man’s every move reflected in the mirrored windows of a nearby skyscraper. But as we noted in our initial PS5 review, the effect is usually a much subtler tweak to the overall “realism” of how objects come across in a scene.

Having those kind of ray-traced images at a full 60 fps is definitely nice, but the impact tends to be muted unless a scene has a lot of highly reflective objects. Even the “Fidelity Pro” mode in some PS5 Pro games—which scales the frame rate back to 30 fps to allow for the ray-tracing algorithm to model more reflections and more accurate occlusion and shadows—doesn’t create very many “wow” moments over a standard PS5 in moment-to-moment gameplay.

On the original PS5, I never hesitated to give up the (often marginal) fidelity improvements in favor of a much smoother frame rate. Getting that slightly improved fidelity on the PS5 Pro—without having to give up my beloved 60 fps—is definitely nice, but it’s far from an exciting new frontier in graphical impact.

Which is which?

When testing the PS5 Pro for this review, I had my original PS5 plugged into a secondary input on the same TV, running the same games consecutively. I’d play a section of a game in Pro mode on the PS5 Pro, then immediately switch to the PS5 running the same game in Performance mode (or vice versa). Sitting roughly six feet away from a 60-inch 4K TV, I was struggling to notice any subjective difference in overall visual quality.

I also took comparative screenshots on an original PS5 and a PS5 Pro in as close to identical circumstances as possible, some of which you can see shared in this review (be sure to blow them up to full screen on a good monitor). Flipping back and forth between two screenshots, I could occasionally make out small tangible differences—more natural shine coming off the skin of Aloy’s face in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, for instance, or a slight increase in detail on Ratchet’s Lombax fur. More often than not, though, I had legitimate trouble telling which screenshot came from which console without double-checking which TV input was currently active.

I’m a single reviewer with a single pair of eyes, of course. Your impression of the relative visual improvement might be very different. Luckily, if you have access to a PS5 already, you can run your own visual test just by switching between Fidelity and Performance modes on any of your current games. If you find the individual screens in Performance mode look noticeably worse than those in Fidelity mode (putting frame rate aside), then you might be in the market for a PS5 Pro. If you don’t, you can probably stop reading this review right here.

Barely a bang for your buck

Even if you’re the kind of person who appreciates the visual impact of Fidelity mode on the PS5, upgrading to the PS5 Pro isn’t exactly an instant purchase. At $700, getting a PS5 Pro is akin to a PC gamer purchasing a top-of-the-line graphics card, even though the lack of modular components means replacing your entire PS5 console rather than a single part. But while a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti could conceivably keep running new PC games for a decade or more, the PS5 Pro should be thought of as more of a stopgap until the PlayStation 6 (and its inevitable exclusive games) hit around 2028 or so (based on past PlayStation launch spacing).

If you already have a PS5, that $700 could instead go toward the purchase of 10 full, big-budget games at launch pricing or even more intriguing indie releases. That money could also go toward more than four years of PlayStation Plus Premium and access to its library of hundreds of streaming and downloadable modern and classic PlayStation titles PS5 titles. Both strike me as a better use of a limited gaming budget than the slight visual upgrade you’d get from a PS5 Pro.

Even if you’re in the market for your first PS5, I’m not sure the Pro is the version I’d recommend. The $250 difference between a stock PS5 and the PS5 Pro similarly feels like it could be put to better use than the slight visual improvements on offer here. And while the addition of an extra terabyte of high-speed game storage on the PS5 Pro is very welcome, the need to buy an external disc drive peripheral for physical games on the new console may understandably rub some players the wrong way.

Back when the PlayStation 2 launched, I distinctly remember thinking that video game graphics had reached a “good enough” plateau, past which future hardware improvements would be mostly superfluous. That memory feels incredibly quaint now from the perspective of nearly two-and-a-half decades of improvements in console graphics and TV displays. Yet the PS5 Pro has me similarly feeling that the original PS5 was something of a graphical plateau, with this next half-step in graphical horsepower struggling to prove its worth.

Maybe I’ll look back in two decades and consider that feeling similarly naive, seeing the PS5 Pro as a halting first step toward yet unimagined frontiers of graphical realism. Right now, though, I’m comfortable recommending that the vast majority of console gamers spend their money elsewhere.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

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Dystopika is a beautiful cyberpunk city builder without the ugly details

city builders, cyberpunk, dystopia, dystopian, dystopika, gaming / Tim Belzer / November 2, 2024

Some of my favorite games deny me the thing I think I want most. Elden Ring refuses to provide manageable save files (and I paid for it). Balatro withholds the final math on each hand played (and its developer suggests avoiding calculators). And the modern X-COM games force me to realize just how much a 98 percent chance to hit is not the same as 100 percent.

Dystopika (Steam, Windows) is a city builder in maybe the strictest definition of that two-word descriptor, because it steadfastly refuses to distract you with non-building details. The game is described by its single developer, Matt Marshall, as having “No goals, no management, just creativity and dark cozy vibes.” Dystopika does very little to explain how you should play it, because there’s no optimal path for doing so. Your only job is to enjoy yourself, poking and prodding at a dark cyberpunk cityscape, making things that look interesting, pretty, grim, or however you like. It might seem restrictive, but it feels very freeing.

Dystopika launch video.

The game’s interface is a small rail on the left side of the screen. Select “Building” and a random shape attaches to your cursor. You can right-click to change it, but you can’t pick one. Place it, and then optionally place the cursor near its top to change its height. Making one building taller will raise smaller buildings nearby. Reaching certain heights, or densities, or something (it’s not explained) will “unlock” certain new buildings, landmarks, and decorations.

Screen showing a tall, T-shaped building,, with — Hooray! I’ve unlocked the headquarters for a megacorp with a very ominous name! (Please appreciate my efforts at public transit.) Credit: Kevin Purdy

You do get to pick out “Props,” like roads and trams and giant billboards and hologram objects and flying carports, but the game is similarly non-committal on what you should do with them, or most anything. You put things down, or delete them, expand them, connect them, and try things out until you like how it looks.

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iPod fans evade Apple’s DRM to preserve 54 lost clickwheel-era games

Apple, Features, gaming, iPod, iPod games / Paul Patrick / November 2, 2024

Dozens of previously hard-to-access games can now be synced via Virtual Machine.

Mom: We have the Game Boy Advance at home / At home: Credit: Aurich Lawson

Old-school Apple fans probably remember a time, just before the iPhone became a massive gaming platform in its own right, when Apple released a wide range of games designed for late-model clickwheel iPods. While those clickwheel-controlled titles didn’t exactly set the gaming world on fire, they represent an important historical stepping stone in Apple’s long journey through the game industry.

Today, though, these clickwheel iPod games are on the verge of becoming lost media—impossible to buy or redownload from iTunes and protected on existing devices by incredibly strong Apple DRM. Now, the classic iPod community is engaged in a quest to preserve these games in a way that will let enthusiasts enjoy these titles on real hardware for years to come.

Perhaps too well-protected

The short heyday of iPod clickwheel gaming ran from late 2006 to early 2009, when Apple partnered with major studios like Sega, Square Enix, and Electronic Arts to release 54 distinct titles for $7.49 each. By 2011, though, the rise of iOS gaming made these clickwheel iPod titles such an afterthought that Apple completely removed them from the iTunes store, years before the classic iPod line was discontinued for good in 2014.

YouTuber Billiam looks takes a hands-on tour through some of the clickwheel iPod’s games.

In the years since that delisting, the compressed IPG files representing these clickwheel games have all been backed up and collected in various archives. For the most part, though, those IPG files are practically useless to classic iPod owners because of the same strict Fairplay DRM that protected iTunes music and video downloads. That DRM ties each individual IPG file not just to a particular iTunes account (set when the game file was purchased) but also to the specific hardware identifier of the desktop iTunes installation used to sync it.

Games already synced to iPods and iTunes libraries years ago will still work just fine. But trying to sync any of these aging games to a new iPod (and/or a new iTunes installation) requires pairing the original IPG file provided by Apple years ago with the authorized iTunes account that made the original purchase.

Didn’t back up that decades-old file? Sorry, you’re out of luck.

A set of 20 clickwheel iPod games was eventually patched to work on certain iPod Video devices that are themselves flashed with custom firmware. But the majority of these games remain completely unplayable for the vast majority of classic iPod owners to this day.

A virtual workaround

Luckily for the sizable community of classic iPod enthusiasts, there is a bit of a workaround for this legacy DRM issue. Clickwheel iPod owners with working copies of any of these games (either in their iTunes library or on an iPod itself) are still able to re-authorize their account through Apple’s servers to sync with a secondary installation of iTunes.

Reddit user Quix shows off his clickwheel iPod game collection. Credit: Reddit

If multiple iPod owners each reauthorize their accounts to the same iTunes installation, that copy of iTunes effectively becomes a “master library” containing authorized copies of the games from all of those accounts (there’s a five-account limit per iTunes installation, but it can be bypassed by copying the files manually). That iTunes installation then becomes a distribution center that can share those authorized games to any number of iPods indefinitely, without the need for any online check-ins with Apple.

In recent years, a Reddit user going by the handle Quix used this workaround to amass a local library of 19 clickwheel iPod games and publicly offered to share “copies of these games onto as many iPods as I can.” But Quix’s effort ran into a significant bottleneck of physical access—syncing his game library to a new iPod meant going through the costly and time-consuming process of shipping the device so it could be plugged into Quix’s actual computer and then sending it back to its original owner.

Enter Reddit user Olsro, who earlier this month started the appropriately named iPod Clickwheel Games Preservation Project. Rather than creating his master library of authorized iTunes games on a local computer in his native France, Olsro sought to “build a communitarian virtual machine that anyone can use to sync auth[orized] clickwheel games into their iPod.” While the process doesn’t require shipping, it does necessitate jumping through a few hoops to get the Qemu Virtual Machine running on your local computer.

A tutorial shot showing how to use USB passthrough to sync games from Olsro’s Virtual Machine. Credit: Github / Olsro

Over the last three weeks, Olsro has worked with other iPod enthusiasts to get authorized copies of 45 different clickwheel iPod games synced to his library and ready for sharing. That Virtual Machine “should work fully offline to sync the clickwheel games forever to any amount of different iPods,” Olsro wrote, effectively preserving them indefinitely.

For posterity

Olsro told Ars in a Discord discussion that he was inspired to start the project due to fond memories of playing games like Asphalt 4 and Reversi on his iPod Nano 3G as a child. When he dove back into the world of classic iPods through a recent purchase of a classic iPod 7G, he said he was annoyed that there was no way for him to restore those long-lost game files to his new devices.

“I also noticed that I was not alone to be frustrated about that one clickwheel game that was a part of a childhood,” Olsro told Ars. “I noticed that when people had additional games, it was often only one or two more games because those were very expensive.”

Beyond the nostalgia value, even Olsro admits that “only a few of [the clickwheel iPod games] are really very interesting compared to multiplatform equivalents.” The iPod’s round clickwheel interface—with only a single “action” button in the center—is less than ideal for most action-oriented games, and the long-term value of “games” like SAT PREP 2008 is “very debatable,” Olsro said.

A short review of Phase shows off the basic rhythm-matching gameplay.

Still, the classic iPod library features a few diamonds in the rough. Olsro called out the iPod version of Peggle for matching the PC version’s features and taking “really good advantage from the clickwheel controls” for its directional aiming. Then there’s Phase, a rhythm game that creates dynamic tracks from your own iPod music library and was never ported to other platforms. Olsro described it as “very addictive, simple, but fun and challenging.”

Even the bad clickwheel iPod games—like Sega’s nearly impossible-to-control Sonic the Hedgehog port—might find their own quirky audience among gaming subcommunities, Olsro argued. “One [person] beat Dark Souls using DK bongos, so I would not be surprised if the speedrun community could try speedrunning some of those odd games.”

More than entertainment, though, Olsro said there’s a lot of historical interest to be mined from this odd pre-iPhone period in Apple’s gaming history. “The clickwheel games were a reflect[ion] of that gaming period of premium games,” Olsro said. “Without ads, bullshit, and micro-transactions and playable fully offline from start to end… Then the market evolved [on iOS] with cheaper premium games like Angry Birds before being invaded with ads everywhere and aggressive monetizations…”

The iPod might not be the ideal device for playing *Sonic the Hedgehog*, but you can do it! Credit: Reddit / ajgogo

While Olsro said he’s happy with the 42 games he’s preserved (and especially happy to play Asphalt 4 again), he won’t be fully satisfied until his iTunes Virtual Machine has all 54 clickwheel titles backed up for posterity. He compared the effort to complete sets of classic game console ROMs “that you can archive somewhere to be sure to be able to play any game you want in the future (or research on it)… Getting the full set is also addictive in terms of collection, like any other kind of collectible things.”

But Olsro’s preservation effort might have a built-in time limit. If Apple ever turns off the iTunes re-authorization servers for clickwheel iPods, he will no longer be able to add new games to his master clickwheel iPod library. “Apple is now notoriously known to not care about announcing closing servers for old things,” Olsro said. “If that version of iTunes dies tomorrow, this preservation project will be stopped. No new games will be ever added.”

“We do not know how much time we still have to accomplish this, so there is no time to lose,” Olsro wrote on Reddit. iPod gamers who want to help can contact him through his Discord account, inurayama.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 accounted for 19% of Comcast Internet traffic last week

Activision, Call of Duty, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, Comcast, Game Pass, gaming, microsoft, Satya Nadella / Mike M. / October 31, 2024

You might think that since Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (which was released last Friday) is the 21st game in the franchise, it wouldn’t be that highly anticipated. You’d be wrong. Last week’s entry set multiple records when it launched.

Specifically, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the game set new records for Game Pass subscribers, particularly for a first-day game launch. That’s, of course, to be expected—Call of Duty was a major reason why Microsoft acquired Activision, the longtime publisher of the series.

It gets a little zanier, though. The Internet service provider Comcast says Black Ops 6 was directly responsible for 19 percent of its overall traffic the week of the launch, according to a report in The Verge.

That’s partly due to the game’s popularity, but it can also be attributed to its huge file size. A full install of Black Ops 6 can take up to just over 100GB, depending on your platform—and possibly as much as 300GB if you also install game modes tied to the previous entries in the series, like the immensely popular battle royale Warzone. That will wreak havoc on users’ data caps; Comcast imposes a 1.2TB monthly cap in many states.

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Apple silicon Macs will get their ultimate gaming test with Cyberpunk 2077 release

Apple, CD Projekt RED, cyberpunk 2077, gaming, Mac, macOS / Mike M. / October 30, 2024

Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically demanding and visually impressive games in recent years, will soon get a Mac release, according to developer and publisher CD Projekt Red.

The announcement was published on CD Projekt Red’s blog and also appeared briefly during Apple’s pre-recorded MacBook Pro announcement video. The game will be sold on the Mac App Store, Steam, GOG, and the Epic Game Store when it launches, and it will be labeled the Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which simply means it also includes Phantom Liberty, the expansion that was released a couple of years after the original game.

Cyberpunk 2027 launched in a rough state in 2020, especially on low-end hardware. Subsequent patches and a significant overhaul with Phantom Liberty largely redeemed it in critics’ eyes—the result of all that post-launch work is the version Mac users will get.

Apple has been working with AAA game publishers to try and get the games they made for consoles or Windows gaming PCs onto the Mac or iPhone, including Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Death Stranding, and Resident Evil Village, among others. But the addition of Cyberpunk 2077 is notable because of its history of running poorly on low-end hardware, and because it uses new technologies like ray-traced illumination, reflections, and shadows. It also heavily relies on AI upscaling like DLSS or FSR to be playable even on high-end machines.

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Apple is turning The Oregon Trail into a movie

Apple, Apple II, Apple TV, culture, Edutainment, gaming, movies, The Oregon Trail / Tim Belzer / October 28, 2024

Apple will adapt the classic educational game The Oregon Trail into a big-budget movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR).

The film is in early development, having just been pitched to Apple and approved. Will Speck and Josh Gordon (Blades of Glory, Office Christmas Party) will direct and produce. Given that pedigree (zany comedies), it’s clear this film won’t be a serious historical drama about the struggles of those who traveled the American West.

In fact, the report not only notes that it will be a comedy—it says it will be a musical, too. “The movie will feature a couple of original musical numbers in the vein of Barbie,” according to THR’s sources. EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul will be responsible for the original music in the film.

Of course, with a comedy, the writers are at least as important as the director. The film will be written by Kenneth and Keith Lucas—but they’re most recently best known for the 2021 drama Judas and the Black Messiah, for which they received an Oscar nomination.

That’s all we know about the film so far. As for the game, well, it needs no introduction—especially for folks who were of the appropriate age to play it at school or at home on personal computers from the 1970s through the 1990s.

The game is a major cultural touchstone for a certain generation—to the point that “The Oregon Trail Generation” has been used as a label for many of the people born in the early 1980s. It’s long been a thing to joke about the game’s morbid content, like the infamous phrase: “You have died of dysentery.”

Since the film was greenlit by Apple, it’s likely to debut on the Apple TV+ streaming service, but we don’t yet know when it will arrive or who will star in it.

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Fallout: London is a huge Fallout 4 mod that is now playable—and worth playing

bethesda, Fallout, fallout 4, fallout london, gaming, gog, Mods, steam / Tim Belzer / October 26, 2024

The UK equivalent of a Pip-Boy 3000, which is nice to see after so many hours with the wrist-mounted one. Team FOLON

‘Ello, what’s all this, then?

Fallout: London takes place 160 years after the global nuclear war, 40 years before Fallout 3, and in a part of the world that is both remote and didn’t really have official Fallout lore. That means a lot of the typical Fallout fare—Deathclaws, Super Mutants, the Pip-Boy 3000—is left out.

Or, rather, replaced with scores of new enemies, lore, companions, factions, and even some mechanics picked up from the modding scene (ladders!). It’s a kick to see the across-the-pond variants of wasteland stuff: tinned beans, medieval weapons, the Atta-Boy personal computer. There is at least one dog, a bulldog, and his name is Churchill.

As for the story, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: You, newly awakened from an underground chamber (not a Vault, though), enter a ruined London, one riven by factions with deep disagreements about how to move things forward. You’ll take up quests, pick sides, befriend or blast people, and do a lot of peeking into abandoned buildings, hoping to find that last screw you need for a shotgun modification.

London falling

When you first start Fallout: London, you’ll see a London that looks like, honestly, crap. Whatever London did to anger the nuke-having powers of the world, it got them good and mad, and parts of the city are very busted. The city’s disposition to underground spaces has done it well, though, and you can often find yesteryear’s glory in a Tube tunnel, a bunker, or a basement.

As you move on, you’ll get the surge of seeing a part of London you remember, either from a visit or from media, and how it looks with a bit of char to it. The post-war inhabitants have also made their own spaces inside the ruins, some more sophisticated and welcoming than others. Everywhere you look, you can see that familiar Fallout aesthetic—1950s atomic-minded culture persisting until its downfall—shifted into Greenwich Mean Time.

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Video game libraries lose legal appeal to emulate physical game collections online

gaming, Policy / Kris Guyer / October 25, 2024

In an odd footnote, the Register also notes that emulation of classic game consoles, while not infringing in its own right, has been “historically associated with piracy,” thus “rais[ing] a potential concern” for any emulated remote access to library game catalogs. That footnote paradoxically cites Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) founder and director Frank Cifaldi’s 2016 Game Developers Conference talk on the demonization of emulation and its importance to video game preservation.

“The moment I became the Joker is when someone in charge of copyright law watched my GDC talk about how it’s wrong to associate emulation with piracy and their takeaway was ’emulation is associated with piracy,'” Cifaldi quipped in a social media post.

The fight continues

In a statement issued in response to the decision, the VGHF called out “lobbying efforts by rightsholder groups” that “continue to hold back progress” for researchers. The status quo limiting remote access “forces researchers to explore extra-legal methods to access the vast majority of out-of-print video games that are otherwise unavailable,” the VGHF writes.

“Frankly my colleagues in literary studies or film history have pretty routine and regular access to digitized versions of the things they study,” NYU professor Laine Nooney argued to the Copyright Office earlier this year. “These [travel] impediments [to access physical games] are real and significant and they do impede research in ways that are not equitable compared to our colleagues in other disciplines.”

Software archives like the one at the University of Michigan can be a great resource… if you’re on the premises, that is. Credit: University of Michigan

Speaking to Ars Technica, VGHF Library Director Phil Salvador said that the group was “disappointed” in the Copyright Office decision but “proud of the work we’ve done and the impact this process has had. The research we produced during this process has already helped justify everything from game re-releases to grants for researching video game history. Our fight this cycle has raised the level of discourse around game preservation, and we’re going to keep that conversation moving within the game industry.”

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Meta Quest 3S is a disappointing half-step to Carmack’s low-cost VR vision

gaming, meta quest, Meta Quest 2, virtual reality / Tim Belzer / October 22, 2024

Significant visual and comfort compromises make last year’s Quest 3 a better VR investment.

Look at all those dots. Credit: Kyle Orland

It’s been just over two years now since soon-to-depart CTO John Carmack told a Meta Connect audience about his vision for a super low-end VR headset that came in at $250 and 250 grams. “We’re not building that headset today, but I keep trying,” Carmack said at the time with some exasperation.

On the pricing half of the equation, the recently released Quest 3S headset is nearly on target for Carmack’s hopes and dreams. Meta’s new $299 headset is a significant drop from the $499 Quest 3 and the cheapest price point for a Meta VR headset since the company raised the price of the aging Quest 2 to $400 back in the summer of 2022. When you account for a few years of inflation in there, the Quest 3S is close to the $250 headset Carmack envisioned.

A new button on the underside of the Quest 3S lets you transition to pass-through mode at any time. Credit: Kyle Orland

Unfortunately, Meta must still seriously tackle the “250 grams” part of Carmack’s vision. The 514g Quest 3S feels at least as unwieldy on your face as the 515g Quest 3, and both are still quite far from the “super light comforts” Carmack envisioned. Add in all the compromises Meta made so the Quest 3S could hit that lower price point, and you have a cheap, half-measure headset that we can only really recommend to the most price-conscious of VR consumers.

Meta Quest 2 Plus

iFixit’s recent teardown of the Quest 3S shows that the new headset is more than just a spiritual successor to the cheap and popular Quest 2. On the contrary, iFixit found the Quest 3S optical stack uses the exact same parts as the Quest 2, right down to the LCD panels and fresnel lenses.

In 2020, the 1832×1920 per-eye resolution offered by that visual stack represented a significant upgrade from what had come before, especially at such a low price point. Today, though, that dated display technology invites direct comparisons to the 2604×2208 per-eye display on last year’s Quest 3. With the displays sitting just inches from your eyes, that difference represents a very noticeable 20 percent drop in apparent clarity, down from 25 pixels per degree to a mere 20.

Going back to the 3S after a year spent in the Quest 3 is a bit like walking around in glasses that suddenly have a thin layer of Vaseline smeared on them. Everything looks quite a bit fuzzier, especially near the borders of the display, and edges of objects look distinctly more jagged than on the Quest 3. The difference is especially noticeable when trying to read small text in VR or make out fine details in the real world through the headset’s array of passthrough cameras.

It’s not quite a retreat to the days of the infamous “screen door effect” that plagued early Oculus-era headsets, but the distinct visual downgrade makes virtual reality experiences that much less convincing and engrossing on the 3S.

It’s the little things

The visual downgrades on the Quest 3S extend to the field of view, which narrows from 110 horizontal degrees on the Quest 3 to a mere 97 degrees on the 3S (the vertical field of view sees a smaller reduction from 97 degrees to 93 degrees). This difference isn’t as apparent as the drop in resolution between the two headsets, but it does lead to a few more “tunnel vision” moments at the margins. In a game like Beat Saber, for instance, I noticed many of my swings were rendered effectively invisible by the larger black void taking up much of my peripheral vision.

A comparative side view shows the reduced depth of the pancake lens housing on the Quest 3 (top) compared to the Quest 3S (bottom). Credit: Kyle Orland

Going back to the fresnel-lens-based Quest 2 visual stack also means doing without the thinner pancake lenses introduced on the Quest 3. The result is an eyebox on the 3S that extends about an inch farther from your face than on the Quest 3. That might not sound like much, but having the lens’ center of gravity farther from your face makes the headset feel a bit heavier and the fit a bit less secure as you move your head around in VR.

Then there are the compromises when it comes to fine-tuning the distance between the Quest 3S’ lenses. On the Quest 3, an adjustment wheel on the bottom of the headset lets you adjust this interpupillary distance (IPD) continuously, down to the millimeter precision. On the Quest 3S, you instead manually shift the lenses into three preset grooves that are a full 5 millimeters apart. If your face’s actual IPD falls in the middle of those 5 mm windows, the result can be the kind of eye strain and trouble focusing that we complained about in our original Quest 2 review.

Meta has also done away with quite a few Quest 3 creature comforts in an apparent effort to keep the Quest 3S price down. The lack of an external depth sensor, for instance, can make things like pass-through video and hand tracking feel a bit more wonky than on the Quest 3. The Quest 3S is missing a standard headphone jack, too, for those still using wired headphones. And the new headset also lacks any automatic face detection, adding the small annoyance of physically tapping the power button to return from sleep mode when you put it back on.

Spend the extra money

From the front, the external cameras are the easiest way to tell the difference between the Quest 3S (left) and the Quest 3.

I’ve been comparing the Quest 3S to the Quest 3 because that’s the decision consumers considering a Meta headset will face today (if they can get over the need for a Meta account to use the headset in the first place). But Meta’s discontinuation of the aging Quest 2 means millions of current Quest 2 owners will soon be faced with the prospect of upgrading or abandoning Meta’s VR ecosystem for good, just as original Quest owners did last year.

For those current Quest 2 owners, the Quest 3S represents the cheapest way to maintain continued access to Meta’s library of VR games and apps. And that library continues to expand with everything from mind-bending indie games to quirky multiplayer arenas to single-player adventures like Batman: Arkham Shadow, which now comes free with every Quest 3 or 3S headset.

But the move from a Quest 2 to a Quest 3S is relatively small, considering the four-year gap between the similarly priced headsets. Yes, you’ll notice some significant improvements in the newer headset’s full-color pass-through cameras and the headset’s maximum frame rate (up from 90 Hz to 120 Hz). The 3S also offers a slightly more future-proofed Qualcomm XR Gen 2 processor (over the Quest 2’s original XR processor) and slightly more precise Touch Plus controllers (which are missing the annoying tracking ring on the original Quest 2 controllers).

All told, though, the Quest 3S is far from the generational upgrade from the Quest 2 you might hope for. For that kind of apparent jump, you’re much better off shelling out a bit more money for the full-fledged Quest 3. The improvements in form factor, field of view, IPD adjustment, and especially resolution make the higher-end set well worth the extra money. That’s especially true if you can manage to track down the now-discontinued 128GB Quest 3, which is currently being closed out for just $430 (compared to $500 for the new 528GB version).

If you simply want the cheapest way to access Meta’s library of virtual reality games, the Quest 3S certainly fills that hole in the market. If you want a more robust VR experience that’s likely to suffice further into the future, though, the extra investment in a Quest 3 headset is probably worth it.

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Squadron 42’s new 2026 launch date will miss its original target by 11 years

gaming / Tim Belzer / October 21, 2024

*Arena Commander* was revealed to the public at PAX East in April 2014. From our perch in the press balcony, we could see the dev team on the stage (including Roberts) frantically re-compiling the game so that it would run properly. Credit: Lee Hutchinson

The planned May 2014 release of that module was eventually delayed until December. At the time, we noted that “a full release of the Star Citizen MMORPG [would be] expected near the end of 2016,” a date that now seems as naive as the original 2015 launch window for Squadron 42.

“We will build the game you are dreaming about”

Back in 2014, Roberts Space Industries had raised a mere $67 million from crowdfunders eager to see Roberts’ lofty vision for a new era of space simulation games. Now, that funding has climbed past a staggering $731 million from players buying pricey virtual ships in a game that still exists only as an unpolished alpha plagued with significant gameplay issues.

Roberts said in a March update that the team had “spent significant time looking at what Star Citizen 1.0 means and what it would take to get there.” For now, though, the team “is hard at work, heads down, driving toward the finish line” for Squadron 42, as highlighted by the game’s public progress tracker.

A fan-designed *Star Citizen* development roadmap summary, posted in early 2023. Credit: Odysseus1992

The extremely lengthy development path for Star Citizen and Squadron 42 has become something of a joke in the 12 years since it first became a crowdfunding darling. But it’s not like we weren’t warned. In 2012, Roberts Space Industries offered a public pledge that the use of crowdfunding meant the developer would “focus on quality free of the pressure to deliver by a certain financial quarter.” The team also warned that “there may be delays and there may be changes; we recognize that such things are inevitable and would be lying to you if we claimed otherwise.”

“You’ve done your part, and we will now do our utmost to live up to your expectations,” the team wrote in that now 12-year-old pledge. “We will build you the game you are dreaming about.”

Squadron 42’s new 2026 launch date will miss its original target by 11 years Read More »

MechWarrior 5: Clans is supposed to be newbie-friendly, and I put it to the test

battletech, gaming, mechwarrior, mechwarrior 5, mechwarrior 5 clans, strategy / Tim Belzer / October 18, 2024

There are multiple layers to a Clans battle. There is your actual movement, which can take getting used to, with your legs moving on their own trajectory while you swivel your torso. There is your squad and how they’re deployed, which takes up many of your background thought cycles. And there is your mech, its heating levels, its armor condition, its speed, and everything else you set yourself up for during customization.

Your enemies and your copilots are, well, pretty dumb. There’s good variety in what you face and what you must do, but nobody besides you on the field seems to have a great sense of how verticality works or what the most important thing on the field is at that moment. Once you accept that your squad mates are powerful dummies, you’ll learn to let go of your own mech a bit and spend more time nudging them around or jumping into their cockpits and taking over for a spell.

The nature of mech combat in these games did not, after a half-dozen missions, click with me. On some level, it’s interesting juggling various weapons, positioning yourself with limited movement, and directing teammates. I’m going slow, and it feels like a slog, but I could go faster if I had made a different choice during loadout. I’d just have to make somebody else the heavy.

But it’s also a crunchy simulation game, simulating machinery that does not actually exist. Everything that stands between you and your sense of capable combat is a choice made by the developers.

Mecha culpa

Based on my conversations with longtime MechWarrior fans and reading lots of positive reviews to figure out if there’s something wrong with me, I think MechWarrior 5: Clans is a very juicy offering for mech fans who have been hungry for something new (and especially something set in this Clans-coming-back period) for quite some time. I’m just not entranced as a newcomer, and I’m now thinking something like Armored Core VI would be more my speed if I’m looking for rocking or possibly socking robots. I also didn’t engage with multiplayer at all, so my standard dismissal of combatant AI would only half-apply there.

By all means, though, tell me and each other how this game looks or plays to you. I was not bio-engineered for MechWarrior (I mean, just look at how many contractions I use), but I can still appreciate that it looks pretty good for those who fit better into the chassis.

MechWarrior 5: Clans is supposed to be newbie-friendly, and I put it to the test Read More »