Palworld’s astonishing success swelled over the weekend, with the ‘Pokémon with guns’ survival and crafting game shooting up Steam’s most-played games list and selling millions more copies.
03.01.2024 - 17:22 / gamesradar.com / Of War
A God of War: Ragnarok developer has revealed that one of the game's subtlest sound effects is the sound of their baby's heartbeat from inside the womb.
In a recent tweet, PlayStation senior sound designer Alex Previty revealed what went into creating the sound effects heard during the Spark of the World section of God of War: Ragnarok. In a clip, you can see Kratos looking around the environment as a peculiar echoing sound rings out around him. Underneath that, a heartbeat sound rings out, adding a strangely visceral effect.
That's likely deliberate given the story implications of this part of the game, which I won't spoil here, but it turns out that that heartbeat effect is very real. Previty revealed that the sound "is actually my daughter's heartbeat while she was still in the womb," and that he recorded it using a Doppler - a fetal heartbeat monitoring device.
This is one of my favorite sounds I made for the game! The heartbeat sound is actually my daughter's heartbeat while she was still in the womb - I recorded it via the 3.5mm output of a baby doppler. The longer tonal elements are from a children's choir warming up in a gymnasium! https://t.co/9PV8iPpzhPDecember 27, 2023
The rest of the noise comes from a children's choir, who Previty recorded as they were warming up. Both sound effects are dramatically slowed down - in a follow-up tweet, Previty demonstrated the original sounds, outlining the work down to create the eventual effect.
Previty's tweet is a fascinating peek behind the curtain of two different aspects of game development. On the one hand, there's the astounding, existential foley work that they document, showing how sound design can take an original sample and tweak it to capture an entirely unique mood. There's also a sense of how PlayStation's central teams help its first-party studios create their games - Previty doesn't work for God of War developer Sony Santa Monica, but for Sony's Creative Arts team, meaning that he's contributed to multiple games, including Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and the Demon's Souls Remake, in these smaller, more subtle ways.
God of War: Ragnarok just dropped its Valhalla update , featuring a roguelike mode so tricky that no-one on the dev team was able to complete its hardest difficulty .
Palworld’s astonishing success swelled over the weekend, with the ‘Pokémon with guns’ survival and crafting game shooting up Steam’s most-played games list and selling millions more copies.
Palworld’s astonishing success swelled over the weekend, with the ‘Pokémon with guns’ survival and crafting game shooting up Steam’s most-played games list and selling millions more copies.
One of the hardest things for gamers to see is a studio that was once on “top of the world” slowly falling apart and becoming a shell of its former self. We’re seeing this happening all over the place nowadays, with companies failing to capitalize on what’s important within the industry, layoffs happening due to “poor sales,” or even “overinvestments,” and so on. But the biggest one that has affected many studios is that they haven’t been able to make quality games like they used to, and Rocksteady Studios is the newest one to do that, which is where our story starts.
A hardcore Elden Ring player has recently started to play the game in a curious way: by rolling in real life every time they dodge during boss fights. Many Elden Ring bosses are already notoriously hard, and with this handicap, the player made these fights even more difficult.
Expansions and DLCs have long been part of the gaming industry as developers and publishers continuously seek ways to monetize a successful release beyond the initial purchase. While some gamers may scoff at the mere thought, the best examples of expansions and DLCs have delivered truly incredible gaming experiences that built upon an already great foundation and elevated it even further.
The Last of Us Part 2’s No Return is so good it makes you wonder why Naughty Dog even bothered with making a story. A bonus mode that comes with The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, No Return transforms the acclaimed 2019 game into a full roguelike experience. It’s a well-rounded, engrossing rework that shows off the game in a new light, while also underlining the identity crisis at the heart of Naughty Dog: the version of the studio that excels at top-flight action-adventure games, and the Naughty Dog that strives to tell uncompromising, mature interactive stories.
God of War fans have been speculating about what a new body for Mimir could look like, but one suggestion involving Baldur is a true stand-out. However, its likelihood is uncertain when taking into consideration certain story aspects.
Behind-the-scenes clips from God of War 2's production have resurfaced on social media, emphasizing how complex game development can be for just a single minute of "gameplay."
One Red Dead Redemption 2 player online believes they may have found the highest point in the game's entire map. Red Dead Redemption 2's map is one of the most expansive and detailed in gaming, and it's interesting to see even more details uncovered.
A new God of War Remake fan concept video within Unreal Engine 5 has been released, and we're sure that Kratos fans will appreciate it.
With the likes of The Last of Us, Uncharted, Twisted Metal, and Gran Turismo, Sony has adapted a number of PlayStation’s biggest properties of late, and there’s plenty more to come.A God of War series was greenlit for production at Amazon Prime Video in 2022, while a Horizon series has also been in the works at Netflix. At its CES 2024 press conference, Sony provided a brief update on both.
features a wide variety of magical abilities to use throughout an adventure, and this consequently means that not every supernatural effect or interaction works exactly as expected. Figuring out powerful combinations or unique exploits for spells and features is part of the fun for many, even if developer Larian Studios has taken care to patch a number of major issues to achieve a more proper ideal of balance. Some magical side effects offer no mechanical advantages at all, however, making their mark through the game's amusingly incorrect handling more than anything else.