Tom Cruise is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood today. From the 1980s, the actor managed to make a name for himself in the world of cinema, thanks to commercial successes like Top Gun or through deeper roles as in Rain Hand or in Born on the 4th of July. The 90s finally marked a turning point in his career since the actor then launched into action cinema, with Impossible mission. But his career, now very impressive, could have taken a completely different turn. Indeed, the irresistible Tom Cruise, before playing Agent Ethan Hunt in the 90s, was considered to play another cult role, ultimately played by Johnny Depp.
Tom Cruise could have played this cult role for Tim Burton, instead of Johnny Depp
It was during a retrospective dedicated to one of Tim Burton’s cult films, Edward Scissorhands and an interview with the site Dazed that the anecdote was revealed by screenwriter Caroline Thompson. She returned to the casting, explaining that several actors, including Jim Carrey and Tom Hanks, had shown interest in this romantic gothic character. Ultimately, other actors were chosen. Among them, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., but also Tom Cruise.
However, the screenwriter then explained, still during the interview, that Tom Cruise ultimately did not meet the criteria and did not fit the tortured character of Edward. Indeed, the Hollywood actor kept asking questions about this role, for which the film team had no answers: “Cruise wanted to know how Edward went to the bathroom. He was asking the kind of questions that don’t apply to this character! That’s part of the delicacy of this story, we can’t answer ‘How does he shower, or how can he live for years without eating?’. Tom Cruise clearly didn’t want to be in a movie without answers to these questions.”
The rest is known to everyone: Johnny Depp obtains the role which marks the beginning of his fruitful collaboration with Tim Burton. The actor in fact became in the following years the muse of the director, who gave him the main role in many of his productions, such as Sweeney Todd, Charlie and the chocolate factory or Alice in Wonderland.
So no Tom Cruise at Tim Burton. Which is ultimately a blessing in disguise, since since this director’s choice, the now 61-year-old actor has made a name for himself in action cinema. He thus led the Mission: Impossible franchise with an iron fist, as evidenced by the last installment, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1currently in the cinema, transforming it, thanks to strong plots and impressive stunts (which he often performs himself) into a real phenomenon.
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An aspiring musician took his own life after feeling “overwhelmed” by his career prospects and splitting from his girlfriend, an inquest heard.
Caleb Quaye was the son of reggae singer Finley Quaye, who scored top 20 hits in the late 1990s with Sunday Shining, Even After All and Your Love Gets Sweeter.
Caleb, 24, was working as a roadie with other bands to help check out their audio equipment after moving into his mother Mercedes Gutierrez’s house.
On July 7, his mother found him hanged the morning after playing his final gig at a local club in Brighton.
The hearing at Brighton and Hove Coroner’s Court heard the musician was struggling to cope with recent events in his life.
Musician Caleb Quaye, 24, was found dead at his mother’s Brighton home on July 7 after feeling depressed about his career and a breakup with his girlfriend.
Caleb’s father Finley, 49, who won British awards at the height of his success in the 90s, escaped a prison sentence at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last week after admitting destroying the coffee from his former partner shortly after Caleb’s death.
Ms Guiterrez told the coroner: “He felt overwhelmed by the problems and was fighting with himself.
“His girlfriend had broken up with him three days before.
At the time of his death, Caleb was awaiting an evaluation for his ADHD and was practicing yoga to calm his mood.
His group hadn’t made as much progress as he would have liked and he was heading “to dark places,” his mother said.
“He had previously harmed himself and had cigarette burns on his face,” she said.
“He never talked about suicide, but he said he was heading to a dark place.” He would set up stages so other musicians could make money.
Caleb’s father Finley, 49, who won Brit Awards at the height of his success in the 90s, escaped a prison sentence at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last week after admitting destroying the coffee from his former partner shortly after Caleb’s death.
Quaye forced the front door of his ex-girlfriend Rena Gawa’s business in the Scottish capital on July 15 and threw chairs and flowers before smashing several glasses.
Sheriff Matthew Auchincloss offered his condolences to Quaye, who lives in Kensington, west London, over his bereavement and sentenced him to a 12-month supervision order.
The sheriff also agreed not to impose a non-harassment order.
Ms Gutierrez said she last saw her son alive when he entered her bedroom at her home in Hove at 3 or 4am playing loud music.
Caleb was the son of reggae singer Finley Quaye (pictured), 49, who scored top 20 hits in the late 1990s and is pictured at the Brit Awards in 1998.
“I wondered if he had taken anything. He was dramatic and loved attention.
“He took it hard when he messed up and had his ups and downs. »
She said she woke up at 7 a.m. the day he died and ventured downstairs, where she could see the top of his head.
After realizing what had happened, she ran into the street and called for help.
Caleb’s paternal aunt, Annia Summers, told the hearing via video link that she had spoken to her nephew just hours earlier.
“He had a dual diagnosis of addiction and depression, but we were planning a trip to Yorkshire and the Womad festival (an arts event),” she said.
“He said he was looking to be referred to talking therapies. I said I was proud of him for reaching out.
“At no time did I have the shadow of any dark presentiment. »
The court heard Caleb had alcohol and cocaine in his blood when he died.
Coroner Joanne Andrews said drugs were not found in sufficient quantities to have contributed to his death.
An autopsy revealed a single ligature mark around his neck and no signs of third-party involvement.
Recording a finding of suicide, the coroner said: “I would like to say to all the family how sorry I was to hear of his death and pass on my deepest condolences to you all. »
Contact Samaritans free of charge on 116 123, email them at [email protected] or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.
They say that the success of a game is measured against the amount of inconvenience that its users are willing to tolerate in the desire of simply being able to play it. The best example, right now, seems to be why, if you’re like us, you spent hours and hours of your weekend sitting in front of the screen, waiting for your chance to spread democracy… to no avail.
, read the boot menu during the weekend, and it was of little help that, in order to cushion the problems, Arrowhead offered multiplied experience on Saturday and Sunday. Today, however, is Monday, and servers remain inaccessiblewhen the stormy arrival of the work and school week should have relieved some of the load and, more importantly, Arrowhead Game Studios should have found the solution, days ago: more servers.
As the previous, hundreds of posts crying out for more serversas if it were a magic wand, and, for the sake of a “victory” in the “console war”, for the arrival of the title to Xbox, where the infinite power of Microsoft Azure will alleviate the problem instantly… except that is not the problem and It’s not that easy resolving.
Server capacity is not the problem of Helldivers 2
How great was the surprise for whoever published that post, when Johan Pilestedt, Director of Arrowhead Game Studios answered and shed some light on how online games work!
, said. added
But what is “optimizing backend code”? The backend code is the core logic that dictates how the game works and how it runs on the server, as such.
The solution will come soon or, at least, part of it
As it is a multiplayer experience, it is necessary to tune the game to reduce latency and bandwidth usage, as well as implement predictive algorithms to compensate for lag, and compress data packets to reduce the volume of information sent in network. Presumably, if you increase servers, the values in some – or perhaps all – of those calculations will vary.
explained José Luis Martínez Loya,cybersecurity architecture manager. he added
In short, yes, adding servers is one part of the solution – and perhaps the easiest to find – but the other is reprogramming the game to take advantage of them, and we assume that’s where Arrowhead is hitting the road.
When are they going to fix Helldivers 2?
Fortunately, the solution (or at least part of it) is coming soon. Alex Bolle, production director of He said, in the game’s official Discord, that updates will arrive tomorrow, Tuesday, for both versions, the PC and the PS5. That said, Bolle warned that it will take multiple patches before the game is fully operational, so be patient for at least this week.
It seems incredible that almost three years have passed since cyberpunk 2077 hit the stores. We all know his story:the game came to last generation consoles with strong technical problems and what seemed like a strong candidate for game of the year in 2020 ended up being one of the most stumbled launches we can remember in recent yearssomething that tarnished CD Projekt Red’s reputation as one of the best studios in the industry.
Here we are in 2023. The game has already released its versions for current generation consoles and has regained the trust of many players. He The Polish studio’s commitment to its game does not stop there and in a few months we will have the best version of cyberpunk 2077that has been released to date. In preparation for the launch of the ambitious expansion Phantom LibertyCD Projekt Red gave us an extensive demo of more than an hour in which the director Pawel Sasko and the mission designer Despoina Anetaki They sat down with us to play and talk about everything new that is in cyberpunk 2077.
Pawel Sasko made it very clear: “Cybepunk 2077 had a total redesign of the experience that has taken into account the feedback from fans”. Virtually every major game system has been redesigned from the ground up to give us the best version of cyberpunk 2077 that has existed, one that does a total rebalancing of its contents and abundant quality of life improvements. The good news is that all this does not remain only in the contents of Phantom Libertybut it is a total redesign that also impacts the base gameso that those who play it for the first time at the end of this year will have all the improvements that have been worked on since the beginning.
General rebalancing of the base game: skill trees redesigned from the ground up
Our demo started by taking a look at the skill trees in the game menu. Everything has been redesigned, from the interface to the way progression works and the way upgrades are distributed. that affect your character’s stats and your builds.
Among all these skill trees we have a new one. He Relic Three is a novelty of Phantom Liberty which, according to Pawel Sasko, responds to feedback they received from players who couldn’t find a true reward for exploring Night City. Sasko told us that through exploration you will find Relic Points that you can spend to improve the tree and receive many interesting improvements for your character.
All major game systems were rebalanced and many of them redesigned from scratch
He cyberware also had a total redesign. Now you have a bar that shows you the ability to install cyberware on your character and, as we saw in the series edgerunnersyou can install powerful components and upgrades that exceed your capacity, but at the cost of a heavy penalty to your health, just as the cyberpsychosis. All of your character’s stats have been moved to cyberwareso clothing is now a cosmetic accessory that you can make your character look just fine, without having to worry about how everything you wear impacts your stats.
“I think the biggest thing we did was we changed all the core game systems. There was a general rebalancing” Sasko pointed out at the end of our demo. He gave the difficulty modes as an example, adding that the easy mode will be for those who just want to enjoy the story of the game and the hard mode will not be easy to break with much. grindbut it will be really difficult for all those who are looking for a real challenge.
Improvements to driving, police and vehicle combat
Surely at CD Projekt Red they also realized that there were deficient systems in the way the city works. Starting with a topic as simple as the way the police work, during the demo we were invited to get into some trouble to see how there was a total change in the way security works in Night City. Similar to how things work in any game in the series gtawe have a wanted level system, although Sasko confirmed that depending on the crimes you commit, the strategies Night City security will use to hunt you down and the units they will send to stop you will be different.
The above goes hand in hand with combat in vehicles, which is presented as one of the approaches that will have Phantom Liberty. We have vehicles equipped with weapons with which you can attack your pursuers or rivals on the move in many of the missions of the expansion and activities that you will find in the new district that you can explore.
In general “more effort has been made to make Night City feel full of life and to have better reactions from NPC’sto what happens around you“commented Despoina Anetaki during the demo. The mission designer repeatedly made us notice what was happening around us depending on the time of day and the places we were passing through.
An exciting campaign with multiple choices and lots to do
The test of Phantom LibertyAs such, it let us experience a main campaign mission that happens a bit after the first hour of gameplay of this new content. We are not going to give you much of the story so you can discover it when you play it, but we can tell you that in this spy adventure we got to the point where we met the new character played by actor Idris Elba.
Vehicle combat will be important in Phantom Liberty
As in the main campaign of cyberpunk 2077, all your choices have a palpable weight in the way the situations unfold and the way you relate to the main and minor characters. It was confirmed to us that we will even know much more about Jhonny Silverhand, as the history of the character played by Keanu Reeves will be delved deeper. Pawl Sasko pointed out that in the studio they want a focus to explore a new district of Night City, which is designed as a large branch integrated into the same main story of cyberpunk 2077.
How long will this campaign last? Of course we took the opportunity to ask the developers this question, but designer Despoina Anetaki told us that it was very difficult to know, because it is a very variable number of hours for those looking to speedrun the main missions or those who take the time to explore all the new content that is integrated with the expansion. It was pointed out that there are new activities in Phantom LibertyLike the ‘airdrops’, which are missions in which you will have to get close to trying to recover supplies. Sasko also told us that there will be other missions focused on recovering specific vehicles that will take great advantage of the new weaponized vehicle combat mechanics.
cyberpunk 2077 in his prime
What we saw and played from this new expansion of cyberpunk 2077 left us pleasantly surprised. We tried the build of PC that is the only one that takes advantage of the path tracingan advanced lighting simulation technique that goes far beyond the ray tracing. As you can imagine the game looks amazing in graphics, especially when night fell on Night City and we saw it shine with its neon lights that highlighted its brilliant art direction.
The new update of cyberpunk 2077 seems to demonstrate the commitment that CD Projekt Red has with a project that shows the affection they have for it, so even if you don’t plan to buy the new expansion, you can be sure that by the end of this year you will be playing the most balanced and functional version of the game ever.…something very close to what was promised with the strong campaign of marketing that the game had before its release and that was not reached three years ago when we first saw it in stores.
For his part, Phantom Liberty It reminds us how good the studio is at making expansions, as was well demonstrated at the time with those added to The Witcher 3. Regarding the development of the expansions, Pawel Sasko made the following reflection as part of his final comments in our demo:
“Working on expansions is better than working on the base game. You have the whole team trained and the technology and the tools. Everything is working fine now, so you can do better things.”
We remind you that Phantom Liberty It will arrive on Xbox Series, PS5 and PC on September 26 at a price of 30 dollars.
Synapse Played: Innovative PSVR 2 action with eye tracking
Synapse takes PSVR 2’s eye-tracking to the next level, letting you use motion controllers to fling your target to its doom.
The exclusive Roguelite action Synapse for Playstation VR 2 makes fantasies of power come true. I raised opponents at the preview event of the English developer Ndreams like a Sith Lord from afar into the air to smash them onto the deadly asphalt.
Even more amazing is the intuitive one Use of eye tracking in PSVR 2. I used my gaze to mark moving objects in my field of vision, then yanked them up with the left controller and steered them into my opponents. Flowing hand movements worked best. After all, the objects have a certain mass.
Eye-tracking action on PSVR 2
So it’s no wonder that the players waved their arms wildly through the air in front of the demo stations – almost like a group of old-school ravers or cyber-goths. By the way, joint movements were purely coincidental: After all, it is a single-player title. But where do the unusual powers in the VR game come from? Background is a special mission in the Mindset of a super villain.
The main character, specially trained for the mission, combines her brain waves with those of Colonel Peter Conrad. In his mind it is important to decipher the plans for a devastating attack. The biological attack planned by his “consortium” could endanger the entire world.
Of course, Conrad does not let the “operator” attack his thoughts without resistance. As a former black ops leader of covert operations, he knows how to defend himself in his dream world with fantasized mercenaries who rattle out orders to attack in a deep voice.
Gradually, players fight their way into deeper and deeper areas of the subconscious. The levels became designed by hand, so that the end of the game can memorize the layout. However, spawn points, enemies, quests, and locked areas change from playthrough to playthrough.
Despite the surreal scenery, the fights seemed familiar at first. While the opponents took cover behind various covers, we engaged in firefights with pistols. With the laser sight available from the start, quick shots from the hip were also rewarded.
Telekinesis tricks in VR game
When telekinesis was added, the feel of the game changed drastically. At some point it was me Aim with your eyes to “tangible” objects so become second nature that I no longer noticed the unusual controls.
This “Behemoth” brings heavier guns than its petite counterparts. | Image: Ndreams
At first, only movable objects such as boxes could be lifted and thrown at the opponent with sweeping arm movements. After a failed run, however, I invested the points I had collected in the branched talent trees in such a way that I was then able to heave the enemies out of cover myself. Some I just threw over the cliff or into each other.
Grabbing foes and smashing them against the wall felt a bit too easy. For the playable demo, however, the team cheated a bit to show us powerful upgrades faster.
In the finished game some Skills for weapons, telekinesis & Co. will only be available when significantly stronger and faster opponents are scurrying through the rugged cliffs, explained Game Director Dan Taylor. In this way, shotguns, grenade launchers or MPs can later be pimped with target-seeking projectiles.
For telekinesis, for example, there is the ability to grab and throw thrown grenades in the air as an upgrade. A cool idea to avoid running out of cover in panic or having to use your hands. Later, telekinetically held objects can also be picked up or pushed away. Hopefully they can then be thrown forward like a missile like in Outlier.
Fluid and comfortable
By the way, left-handers can flip the dual-wield system if they wish, so that they shoot with their left and rip things up in the air with their right. Climbing ladders and some rocks works with both hands anyway.
After selecting with the eyes, movable telekinesis objects imitate the arm movements. | Image: Ndreams, Photo: MIXED
This also applies to the cover, which is based on the system of the PSVR shooter Fracked. This time, too, I grab any stone blocks with one of my hands to quickly take cover behind them or peek over for a short shot. The implementation of the cover system felt a whole lot more intuitive than in the already successful Fracked.
I especially enjoyed bouncing off cover so quickly that I threw my character up a bit. Similar to Stormland or Outlier, the sudden physical jerk also helped with comfort, so I didn’t feel any kind of nausea.
Again, the key is presumably outwitting body awareness, particularly the “cochlea” in the inner ear. As soon as the fluid in the vestibular system starts to boil, the brain seems to be able to cope much better with sudden movements in virtual reality. At least that’s what my previous VR experiences have shown me.
Here I make much smaller jumps than in the similarly designed arcade game Outlier. On the other hand, the result in Synapse looks much smoother and more polished than in Joy Way’s early access game, which unfortunately was discontinued incomplete.
Synapse Played: An artistic PS VR2 shooter that gives you the power of telekinesis.
The unveiling of synapses State of Play features a powerful combination of handgun and telekinetic combat. At PlayStation’s Showcase last month, developer nDreams used the release date announcement to unfold the story of a lonely agent who descends into another’s mind to avert a global catastrophe, as well as a reunion of two high-profile voice actors who once again team up on a… Find Secret Mission again, but this time on opposite pages. And now, thanks to a preview complete with a specially curated game demo, we have a better understanding of how Synapse’s gameplay unfolds.
Let’s take a closer look at the heart of the Gamepay loop. It’s all based around tactical combat, where you’ll use your basic abilities – harnessing bullets, telekinesis, and interactive items – to dodge multi-tiered arenas full of enemies. These action-packed encounters become increasingly complex and intense. You’re outnumbered, you’re constantly being left behind, and attackers can teleport to cover for short distances. Continuously unlocked abilities and random boosts can turn the tide in your favor again. All of these tools are designed to give you a nudge to use your skills creatively in the most fun and efficient way possible. Synapse has the DNA of a rogue-like.
Let’s take a closer look. In one playthrough, you will have to fight an ever-growing mix of different enemies across multiple levels, with the sequence of these levels being randomly selected from a large collection of possible locations. Completing one of these opens a door to the next, offering two possible abilities on the threshold. These then give you entertaining modifiers for the rest of the run. Hold an object with telekinesis to counter it in slo-mo. Make your balls fly in a curve. Temporarily transforms enemies affected by telekinesis into allies or targets, deflecting the fire of other attackers away from you.
Synapse’s mini-map is carefully designed. Flip your TK hand palm up to have a radial device materialize on it. A 3D space hovers above, locating enemy locations and collectibles. It’s an interaction with the same simple gratification – and muscle memory – as checking your watch for notifications.
Synapse uses the term “Revelations” to refer to permanent upgrades found in all three talent trees – Telekinesis, Weapons, and Resilience. Available between playthroughs, these trees give you the ability to grab enemies (and fling them around like rag dolls), catch their grenades (while they’re about to throw them), and upgrade your weapon stock, among other things. You can activate shrines that appear within the levels and get a health boost or new weapons.
All of this was unlocked and usable during my early access as I was given a decent amount of XP for the demo. But before I jump into the different levels and try out my skills, I need to learn how the basic mechanics work first. Time for the tutorial and the basic mechanics.
The movements are true to a first-person shooter – character and camera are controlled by the sticks on the Sense controller, with optional comfort settings. You can also choose which hand is responsible for what. gun hand is
self-explanatory, but it’s not quite enough: to load weapons, you have to partially eject the magazine and then stuff it back in with force. You can use your other hand for that. Or any hard surface (this can be anything from something to hide behind to an enemy’s skull). It’s a satisfying feeling.
With your others The multitasking then starts by hand. It can be used to interact with the environment where you have taken cover: the movement of your Sense controller will carry over into the game, allowing you to sidestep or pull out of cover. As long as your finger keeps the trigger on the Sense controller depressed, you’re anchored. This theme comes from nDream’s previous PS VR title, Fracked. A nice feature that goes hand-in-hand with your body’s movements, giving you freedom of movement while you’re in place.
The game’s music was composed by Paul Weir, who also worked on No Man’s Sky. He was commissioned to take inspiration from the direction of Chrisopher Nolan’s sophisticated bluckbuster films, giving Synapse a soundtrack reminiscent of Hans Zimmer.
Along with PS VR2’s gaze tracking, it’s this hand that controls telekinesis. You quickly get a feel for everything that is interactive in Synapse: boxes, platforms (and later also enemies and their grenades). In a completely monochromatic world, things that can be influenced are suddenly framed in bright colors. Grab hold of the Sense controller and you’ll be able to move items as telekinesis dictates.
The highly anticipated Palworld has just been released on Steam in early access format, and its launch is so successful that it has ended affecting the payment gateway and even the platform’s store tab. On X (formerly Twitter) and the game’s discussions section, some users share photos or screenshots with error messages when swiping the credit card.
“An unexpected error has occurred. Your purchase has not been completed. Please wait a few minutes and try again” reads the message, which appears occasionally when a game with enormous scope is released: it happened with Cyberpunk 2077, for example. Illustratively, Palworld occupied the Fifth place on Steam’s most wanted games list; and it was not possible to reserve it before this day. Its price, in fact, was a mystery until last week.
Although the pre-order issue has undoubtedly had a lot of influence on the “funnel” caused by Palworld, there is actually also another factor that should have just the opposite effect: the game is launched on Game Pass in parallel with its premiere on Steam. Considering that many already pay for the Xbox subscription service on a routine basis, it would be logical that it would move a very high percentage of potential buyers — and it probably has.
Palworld, a new success on Steam
Although at the time of writing these lines Palworld is only less than three hours old, SteamDB already has truly enviable activity figures: 235,564 simultaneous players, and counting. Those numbers are similar to those of triple-A productions in the style of Destiny 2 or Rust.
I am a child of the 90s and like many of you, Pokémon was part of my childhood. Like me, many of you have grown up with pocket monsters and I in particular owe my love for video games to the Big N—and I haven’t played a Pokémon in about 15 years. Therefore, when you play Palworld you feel like something inside you explodes; catches fire and you end up letting go of your childhood, and that’s where the good thing about the Pocketpair game lies, because that sweetened pokemon and? series of the great japanese sagaseeks to amaze anyone who has a fond memory of Game Freak.
In fact, reduced to a minimum, Palworld is a meme, and does not hide its status as a joke. It was announced two years ago with the shocking idea of ”it’s a Pokémon with machine guns”, and it has carried that almost slogan until its premiere this week in . An early access that I’ve been playing for a week and that has shown me that although Palworld is shady, in terms of how it plays with your feelings, when it doesn’t parody Pokémon, falls to pieces.
It turns out that, in the end, Palworld needs to stretch the gum of a meme thanks to which it will be during the first weeks, but which will diminish when the novelty wears off. It is not something exclusive to him, it must be said, it happens to all games. However, Pocketpair’s open world live by and for jokes, and it takes more than laughs to keep the game going. Of course, to Caesar what is Caesar’s, there is potential in some of his ideas; again, those “Pokeideas”.
Palworld, a parody that starts from a very simple idea: the freedom of the player
Is Palworld anything more than “Pokémon with shotguns” and flagrant violations of international slavery and war agreements? Yeah, freedom. Apart from being a meme and an avoidance, almost like Neo in The Matrix, of any type of demand from Nintendo for a copy, Palworld actually makes eyes at the open world concept of Breath of the Wild.
Pocketpair’s game—by the way, it is the third one they have developed, they are not new to video games—seeks to replicate that “handmade” feeling of the Big N with a vast game world, divided by islands and with a structure of “if you see a mountain in the distance, you can reach it.” Almost like a isekaia work where the protagonist is transported from one world to another to which he is unknown, we will begin our adventure by editing our character with some classic customization options that, if I don’t argue, it’s because they don’t come out of the rule.
The important thing here is that feeling of a massive, yet empty world. It is not a procedural mapand that play tricks in several aspects so we all have the same extension and locations regardless of our game, but so massive in scale that it bloats from the beginning and that, even without being very inspired, with a lot of plain without buildings or striking visual elements, it knows how to get good It feels like being in a dreamlike natural setting, and here you come in as the protagonist.
Less Pokémon and more a regular one
If in its layout of the world it is Zelda, in its mechanical It is one, one more it must be said. Pocketpair knows the characteristics of the genre and does not bring anything new to the mix: construction system, collection, need to eat and sleep, day-night cycle and hot-cold; and a system of improvements, levels and statistics linked to the level of our camp or that of our character. And, of course, that of ours pals.
The Pals, the Pokémon on this side of the judicial agreements, are the other leg of the table that is Palworld and, without a doubt, the most striking. There are, in total, 111 Pals to discover and capture, and they will be recorded in your Palpedia, the Pokedex of a lifetime. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have defended to the death the most basic concept of the license and although they have had competitors of one type or another, causing Palworld to lose that sense of uniqueness, Any game let us capture animalshave powers and, ultimately, are the allies of humans, has the attention of the whole community of players.
There are, in total, 111 Pals to discover and capture, and they will be noted in your Palpedia
However, it is the first time in a long time that I have felt like playing something related to Pokémon because Palworld, the closer it gets to the Japanese license, the better it moves. Capturing Pals, for example, is done with the classic system of lowering the life of the animal in question and throwing a ball at its head, hoping that it is too tired to resist. Here, the difference that Palworld puts on the table, following the parody trail, is that if in one we weakened the Pokémon with blows from other Pokémon; here we do it based on shotguns, rifles, grenade launcher or the bare fists.
As in Pokémon, there is a percentage of success and it will depend on the life of the Pal or the sphere that we launch
It’s fun, so much fun to go hunting for Pals. I admit, it’s very violent and makes you rethink things, but Palworld plays his cards well when it comes to imitating Game Freak and laughing, almost as a Scary Movie, of everything that his saga represents. However, everything is diluted when Palworld is due to the survival genre instead of adventure, because the concessions you make are less fun.
Capturing Pals is, in short, a way to automate the functions of your camp because the combatIn fact, it is limited to two options: attackeither not to attack. And even so, don’t expect that concept of automated factories with animal assembly lines that the game’s previews seemed to hint at. It’s all simpler than that, although simplicity is not bad and in a game like this with so much concept, it is even necessary.
The more levels we have, the more improvements we can unlock from the technology tree. This translates into a classic objective-reward system whereby the more we play, the better our camp structures will be. We have since farms to be able to extract wool from the Pals or eat the eggs they lay; areas of tree felling either extraction of resources limited to the classic grid system of the stage; or forges, but all this with the help of the Pals. For example, in the latter we can kind of Flareon fanning the flames and heating the metal that we can use to make bullets, while praying for the end of his life to come.
When the initial surprise wears off and the meme wears off, it all feels like archetypal survival.
And it is that, When it happens the surprise initial and the meme are sold out, everything feels as a archetypal. Many serve a single task and it is fun to see how, when you build something, they go without asking permission to carry out their tasks. But since you always depend on the AI to speed up the tasks, you will end up taking the lead by chopping the nearby trees to obtain material. Furthermore, the construction is not satisfactory and you will end up building a house with four walls and a roof to avoid the hassle of construction mode.
However, this genre can find a niche and benefit, without a doubt, from its online mode of up to 32 playersalthough only if we turn a blind eye to their issues inherited from their concept of a static world. I have not been able to get the most out of this enormous mode, since I have barely been able to bring together two players in the same world, but since the scenario is not procedural and they all appear in the same area, the competitive component is diluted Well, reaching the high part of the map takes days. Furthermore, we cannot take our Pals or characters from one world to another, and the level does not autoscale. Too many hassles for a mode that I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt until it is released.
Take them all, or shoot them down in a cheeky game
I hoped that, far from the , if the studio had avoided the bad eyes of the Japanese, they would still expand and make the idea of ”get them all” of Pokémon their own with a ungainly open world, simple and effective. I have already told you that no, it is due to his condition, but I feel obliged to talk about what does work.
The combat, for example, is so basic and gives so little thought to satisfying the player that it’s fun. As I mentioned, there is no possibility to give directions to your Pals. They are there to make a big deal and help you lower the life of the bug on duty, but, even so, Pocketpair does not bow its head and knows a lot about copying homework.
Each Pal has a basic skill which will be broken down into other secondary schools that follow the classic rule of fireballs, water gun, earthquake… Everything so that, visually, it reminds us of the Japanese saga. We cannot choose them, I have already said that it is basic, but it is the synergy Pal with the player what’s fun here.
They all have a fourth skillone that we can only unlock based on the level we have and that allows us use Pals as shields, flamethrower, mounts to travel the great plains, or even the possibility of give them firearms. It’s all so absurd that I wish it were explored more thoroughly because concepts like the , are barely Pal with brilli-brilli with nothing to do other than serve as decoration in the factory.
Of course, it’s not just about fighting the Pals and although here, again, Palworld gets tripped up, it leaves some little crumbs something that will evolve, I suppose, over the months. Each area of the map, where as in the Japanese saga there are Pals of different rarity, is besieged by the Syndicate. I don’t really know what implications this group has. They are AI-controlled humans who serve as putty to shoot at, but they capture pals and eat them. In reality they are like us, but let’s consider them the villains of a poorly told story.
Apart from serving as mere entertainment and a target to beat because many of them will have captured a unique Pal who, once released, will join our ranks, we have the Syndicate towers. Again, taking a look at Pokémon, these serve as gymsalthough there is hardly a confrontation straight against a boss which, all things considered, is the most anticlimactic that one might expect. They are punch sponges and their small stage and the impossibility of using potions, or using power-ups, reduces the strategy to a tug of war to see who does the most damage. The idea is good, the execution is not. At the end of the day they are obstacles, optionalwhich do not give much of themselves and cannot be enjoyed cooperatively (the latter based on the version played).
The caves They are more fun. There is a little bit of everything: strange Pals that, as in Pokémon, are native to the dark areas and of greater rarity. But there are also chests, eggs that you can collect and hatch in an incubator, or enemy AI that you can shoot to win. It is an optional scenario too, not random and that, in the played version, does not regenerate its itemsso once you complete it there is no interest in accessing it again.
Is Palworld a Pokémon-killer? No, it’s a meme that will soon start working
There are good ideas in Palworld, but at half speed. When it tries to be a successor to Game Freak, like a sugar-coated Pokémon, that’s when I want to play the most. Even visually, although it has that air of from Unreal Engine 5 —an engine that, by the way, supports the game—, there are beautiful moments and the design of the Pals is anything but ugly. In addition, performance with an RTX 3060 Ti and an i5 12400 is not bad, with few edges to polish which will help its expansion on PC.
When it tries to be a successor to Game Freak, like a sweetened Pokémon, that’s when I most want to play
It is a game that you have the feeling exists to give something to talk about. I also don’t want to be too bad with its mechanics, because although I have plenty of them—or at least I have plenty of everything that is like another survival game— still has a lot path ahead.
Surely most of you have at some point felt the so-called bus or cafeteria loves, those fleeting infatuations with people whom we will probably never see again. That’s exactly what I felt when I saw Pacific Drive for the first time during the Future Games Show in 2023. After rewatching the presentation, I gobbled up all the trailers, gameplays, and images I could find.
I’ve had almost three weeks to try out the Pacific Drive demo on Steam (PC). This is the early stages of the game and lasts 1-2 hours for anyone who gets straight to the point. There are a total of three locations dedicated to history and as many dedicated to exploration. They are small-medium sized open areas separated by fast travel.
In short, I have dedicated almost ten hours to the demo. Five or six of them playing as such and the rest trying things like disassembling all the parts of the car, falling off all the possible ravines, throwing the car down hills without a handbrake and more crazy things to test the limits of the game.
Pacific Drive: Exploration, Farming and Driving
Bluntly: I’m in love with Pacific Drive to the hilt and I can’t wait to have it in full on my PS5 to tell you all the details of this adventure. For the moment, it is enough to say that we are a young woman lost in a radioactive exclusion zone (Olympic Peninsula, USA) (STALKER or Metro) and our most powerful tool is a Buick Electra Estate Wagon (40s-60s).
It is difficult to pigeonhole Pacific Drive. Although it recalls Firewatch both in the prominence of the story and in the artistic section, it has a couple of equally important pillars: survival and simulation. I will explain as briefly as possible because the presentations do not do them justice.
Survival: exploration, mining and resource management, crafting all kinds of tools, parts, gadgets and consumables, skill development, upgrades… You must collect materials, upgrade the car and add upgrades to face all the problems and survive the journey through the exclusion zone.
Simulation: Its driving is halfway between arcade and realistic. It has very sophisticated physics and you can screw up any part of the car by being silly, from the engine itself to any of the parts of the sheet metal. Not to mention that the car has a battery (electricity) meter and that you can even suffer punctures, being able to repair the wheels with patches.
The part of the headline that says “it’s the perfect definition of crazy car love” is not an exaggeration. You can’t choose another car and the closest thing to having something unique is customizing it. Pacific Drive It puts you in the following situation: all you have is a beat-up Buick Electra Estate Wagon and you are forced to work with what you find along the way.
This means that you will spend dozens of hours restoring, improving, maintaining and driving the same car, sometimes even adapting it to different locations. After doing some research into the upgrade menus, I have come to the conclusion that the amount of parts for the car is overwhelming. We talked about how there are different tires, protections, roof racks and even specialized insulators for electricity and radiation, among others.
The message I want to convey to you is that Pacific Drive It is not a video game to consume quickly and move on to the next. Already from the demo it cries out for dedication and patience, souls capable of enjoying both the mechanical moments and driving during exploration. You don’t need to have knowledge of engines, but you must be willing to spend hours in the workshop.
It is impossible for me to tell you everything I want about the game without leaving a mile-long article. I have filled out a sheet of my notebook (two sides) with just notes, but I think what is shown is a fairly accurate summary. My goal was to make it clear that the adventure of Ironwood Studios It is deeper than it appears. I hope that the 25 minutes of gameplay will help in this task.
Now that I have clarified what I consider most important, I want to do a quick review of several relevant aspects, both positive and negative. The last few have not been very numerous, but they have been annoying.
The graphics and performance section They have performed perfectly at all times. It looks nice, the framerate is stable and I haven’t had any crashes.
I suffered a couple of bugs with the missions: They were not completed correctly or did not indicate the objective well. Some indications can be confusing. For example: the trunk door is considered a normal door. In fact, you have to make a normal door and it converts when you place it.
The protagonist urgently needs a flashlight, even if it has to be manufactured and powered with batteries. I have not found plans or options to turn it on in the controls. There are flares, but I don’t think they’re enough. Searching for resources indoors and at night is torture. You literally can’t see anything.
The subtitles couldn’t be worse placed. They are located in the upper area and are very difficult to read when you are driving. Taking into account that an accident is very expensive, they should be down by default.
The sound is great, it has music (radio) and the artistic section is for asking whoever designed it to marry you. The HUD and menus have a very cool retro-futuristic vibe similar to Pip-Boy from Fallout.
In conclusion: although the aspects to improve have been annoying (subtitles and flashlight especially), my first impressions on a general level are very good. I am very happy with Pacific Drive. I’m looking forward to analyzing it in its entirety and continuing to play at my own pace after its release on February 22, 2024 for PC and PS5. I recommend not losing track of it!
Along with the 1.1.4 update for cuphead, released this week, StudioMDHR reported that players can now enjoy the game in a “Legacy” version.
According to a note posted on Steam, this version of the game has no patches and will not receive any support from the developer. It contains all the bugs that were present in cuphead until the arrival of the first update.
To play the game the way it was on September 29, the date it was released, just go to “Properties” on Steam, then the “Betas” tab and select “legacy – no patches – use at your own risk” under “Select which beta you want to participate in”. StudioMDHR warns you to be careful however as it switches to the Legacy version of cuphead it can corrupt or even erase your current save files.
The reason why the studio gave this game option to players was not disclosed. However, I’ve read comments from some players saying they’d love to see certain bugs in the game kept, like one that allows you to create a Mugman army, which may perhaps have motivated the people responsible for cuphead to make this Legacy version available.
