Between Palworld, Helldivers 2, and now Manor Lords, it’s been a year of games coming out of left field and achieving runaway success.
23.04.2024 - 13:15 / rockpapershotgun.com
No Rest for the Wicked launched into early access as a bit of a fixer-upper, even by the standards of its 'buy now, play finished game later' model. The good news is that the grim action-RPG’s wonky performance is already being straightened out, with two of its three hotfixes thus far delivering a noticeable improvements, even on older graphics cards.
Following Hotfix 1’s focus on the game's debatably enjoyable weapon durability system, Hotfixes 2 and 3 have made a raft of tweaks aimed at getting those framerates up. Along with the general fixes and enhancements, they both also specifically address the prologue’s dramatic ship battle, in which a maelstrom of sea, rain, and fire effects conspire to batter performance harder than any other part of the game I’ve seen yet. Well, except the cutscenes, for some reason.
I checked in with No Rest for the Wicked, post-Hotfix 3, to see whether these are doing the trick, and I did indeed see a marked uptick on the humble GTX 1060. This GPU is still best deployed at 1080p and on the lowest quality preset, Performance, but it proved far more capable of staying above 30fps than it did at launch. The prologue, while still testy to be sure, no longer spent extended periods in the lowly 20-25fps range, instead staying largely above 40fps. With the sole exception of the final fight in the rain, though that still stuck to a playable 30-35fps. Ashore, it was smoother still, averaging 56fps.
I’ve also tried these hotfixes on the Steam Deck, though the differences are harder to spot when you’re using the default settings (which include a dynamic resolution target of 30fps). It’s still pulling around 30fps during the tough bits and around 40fps in the easygoing areas, though I do get the feeling it’s not dynamically lowering the resolution as often as it used to when trying to maintain that 30fps floor.
Progress is being made, then, though I’m still going to wait for a few more early access spit 'n' polishes before I give No Rest for the Wicked the full performance analysis treatment. For one, there’s still semi-regular stuttering, especially on the Deck, and two, your only graphics options remain the simple presets and a couple of motion blur settings. The massive framerate drops during cutscenes also continue to vex, even if the updates so far have at least eased them up a little.
Between Palworld, Helldivers 2, and now Manor Lords, it’s been a year of games coming out of left field and achieving runaway success.
Bandai Namco reveals a new free update roadmap full of content like stages and game modes, while also confirming that Lidia Sobieska will be joining the Tekken 8 roster as the second season 1 DLC character. It's been an interesting road for Tekken 8 since it launched in January to acclaim reviews and bypassed numerous sales milestones. In fact, Tekken 8 quickly overtook its predecessor in sales, claiming 2 million copies sold in less than 3 weeks.
Bandai Namco has revealed who will be the second DLC character in Tekken 8, along with news of free updates coming throughout the year.
If it weren’t enough to see Bandai Namco announce free updates and new story content for Tekken 8 this year, it also outlined its roadmap for Season 1 DLC fighters. After Eddy Gordo, the next DLC character is one that should be familiar to Tekken 7 fans – Lidia Sobieska. Check out some teases of her power below.
Capcom has announced that it will be delisting Dark Void, Dark Void Zero, and Flock! from Steam on May 8th. It has not yet confirmed if this delisting will also occur on the Xbox store but it does seem likely. If it does then Dark Void and Flock! will be impacted on that platform, as Dark Void Zero was not released on Xbox platforms. Dark Void was already delisted from the PlayStation store, but Flock! is still available.
Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno announced some good news for fans anticipating the Silent Hill 2 remake, stating a release date will be announced soon. There have been a number of rumors surrounding Silent Hill 2, with gamers being given possible release windows of Bloober Team's upcoming classic Konami horror game remake. Many of them have stated that Silent Hill 2 will likely be released sometime this year, which may appear to be the case if Babieno is to be believed.
When are we finally going to get a release date for the Silent Hill 2 remake? The game is widely expected to launch sometime in 2024, but PR from Konami has been spotty at best. We got a somewhat-questionable trailer back in February (that even developer Bloober Team criticized as not representative of the final game) and as we head deeper into the year, there’s still a lot to be nailed down. The game’s been rated by the ESRB and there are rumors it may pop up at a PlayStation Showcase next month, but Konami themselves have remained silent.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has added Manor Lords to its thriving content library. This is the fifth day-one release on Microsoft's subscription service in April 2024, as well as the 56th title to reach Xbox Game Pass Ultimate since the turn of the year.
No Rest for the Wicked's creative director has defended the idea of launching a game in early access following criticism of the game's current state.
One of the developers behind No Rest for the Wicked recently talked about the usefulness of early access releases, suggesting that even well-regarded titles such as Dark Souls could have benefited from this practice. Early access is becoming increasingly popular in gaming, and No Rest for the Wicked is just one of the many recent projects to use this release model.
Decades after it took place, the Chornobyl disaster remains so ingrained in the public imagination that it's easy to forget its terrible real-world consequences. But Chornobyl Liquidators, a new immersive sim set to release in June, aims to delve into some of that history in what developer Live Motion Games calls a "commemoration of the disaster and its victims."
Prior to release, all indications were that Stellar Blade would be an unusually technically polished current-gen launch, with the game’s demo leaving many impressed. But, of course, demos aren’t always indicative of the final game, with devs sometimes taking a thin slice of gameplay and give it more polish than the rest of the game. Well, the review embargo for Stellar Blade has arrived, and it seems it’s not only a good time in terms of action (check out Wccftech’s positive review here) but according to the tech heads at Digital Foundry, the full game is every bit as technically sound as the demo. You can check out Digital Foundry’s full video analysis below, provided you have around 20 minutes to spare, or you can scroll down for our rundown of the salient points.