We’ve known for some time now that IO Interactive, the studio behind the fantastic Hitman games, is working on a new James Bond game. And while that team seems like a perfect match and a new Bond game seems long overdue, according to IOI, the team had to assure the folks who own the spy franchise that it wasn’t going to make another FPS in order to convince them to hand over the rights.
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GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 is one of the most famous and beloved video games in history. It popularized FPS games on consoles, sold over eight million copies, and led to dozens of similar James Bond FPS games. I’d argue the games helped grow the franchise’s audience. With all that said, you’d think Eon Productions—the folks who own the Bond franchise—would be excited about a new game based on its popular spy. But according to the devs behind it, that wasn’t the case—and you can blame GoldenEyefor that.
In the newest edition of Edge magazine, as reported by GamesRadar, IO Interactive co-owners Hakan Abrak and Christian Elverdam talked about the still-in-development 007 game, detailing their vision for the project. But the two also explained that it took a lot of convincing to get Eon Productions to sign off on the project, as the Bond owners didn’t want yet another “action-oriented” FPS.
“Our impression was clearly that [at the time] they were not looking for a game,” said IO Interactive CEO and co-owner Hakan Abrak. “And I think it’s fair that they might not have been super-happy with some of the later games.”
The co-owners of IO Interactive pitched Eon Productions on a James Bond game that was less GoldenEye and more about being a globe-trotting, stealth-oriented spy. Elverdam explained that its pitch to Eon focused on how its 007 project would be about getting in and out of a location without causing much collateral damage or engaging in violence unless needed. In other words, IO Interactive’s project won’t be Bond running down endless corridors carrying 20 guns and shooting everyone he encounters, which is how I would describe the vast majority of 007 games made in the last 20 years. Instead, it sounds like it will play a lot more like the Hitman games, where violence is often a last resort and stealthy gameplay is king.
Elverdam told Edge that this approach “helped [IO Interactive] convince Eon that there’s a sophistication in how we treat the agent fantasy.” This seems to have been enough to get the green light and let IO make its Bond project. And honestly, after playing far too many Bond shooters, I can’t wait for a more stealth-oriented spy game. I’ve said before that IOI is the best developer to make a modern 007 game and I can’t wait to see what the studio is working on when it finally reveals more about Project 007.
Some wonderful maniac is developing an emulator that will one day let people play Zeebo games. And…oh wait, you might be asking “What’s a Zeebo?” Fair question! Well, it’s a fairly obscure digital-only console released outside of the United States in 2009 in just two countries. And while it’s not a great console with a library of beloved classics, it’s still nice to see that someone is working hard to preserve this odd piece of gaming history.
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The Zeebo launched in Brazil in June 2009, and later that year came out in Mexico. (And by 2011 it was all over.) The budget console was basically a phone with a controller that connected to your TV. Games and apps on the Zeebo were built using BREW, the same software that powered many early flip-phone games, though the specs inside the Zeebo were a bit more powerful than your average non-smartphone. Still, it wasn’t a powerhouse of a console, and that was kind of the point: to provide people in parts of the world who might not be able to afford expensive, imported consoles with a way to play video games and surf the web via 3G. It was also digital-only to circumvent piracy, forcing players to buy games through its online store. And now, someone is building a PC-based emulator for this strange, nearly-forgotten machine.
As spotted by GamesRadar, on August 1 developer Tuxality uploaded a video of themselves fiddling around with their made-from-scratch Zeebo emulator. While only a few games will boot in the emulator—and they don’t work very well yet—it’s still impressive to even see this much work being put into a device that most folks haven’t even heard of.
In the video, we see Tuxality boot up Zeebo Family Fun Pack and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D. While Family Fun Pack loads up fine, Crash Nitro Kart 3D displays some intense graphical issues. Still, progress is progress. And yes, big publishers and studios including Activision, Capcom, EA, Disney Interactive Studios, and id Software saw their games released on the Zeebo.
Tuxality calls their emulator Infuse, and says it’s a “high-level” Zeebo emulator that’s been written entirely from scratch based on “clean reverse engineering attempts.” The developer also says that Infuse supports macOS and Linux and could (in the future) be easily ported to the Nintendo 3DS as a fully native application.
As for when you’ll be able to play the Zeebo edition of Resident Evil 4, aka the worst way to play that game, Tuxality doesn’t say. It’s likely at least a year or more away from being fully released to the public.
While some might post the very overused Ryan Reynolds “Why?” gif in response to someone making a Zeebo emulator, I’m excited that fan developers and modders out there are continuing to do the work that game companies won’t do to preserve video game history. Yes, even the weird and less-than-great parts of game history need to be preserved. If anything, those are the bits that will disappear first, and that would be even worse than playing Crash Bandicoot on a flip phone console from 2009.
The first episode of The Witcher season 3 begins with a lengthy recap of the previous two seasons: flashes of Henry Cavill in that initial, questionable Geralt wig, Freya Allen as a much-younger, more eyebrow-less Ciri, everyone’s shittier eye contacts, sword fights, magic, and a bit of sex. While watching, I was viscerally reminded of how much ground the series has covered since its 2019 debut—how much better the makeup and styling got, how impressively legible the sword fights are, the undeniable sexiness of most of the cast, and how utterly perfect Cavill is as the eponymous witcher, Geralt of Rivia.
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Netflix’s The Witcher pulls from Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novel series of the same name (which inspired CD Projekt Red’s game franchise), though there are many creative liberties taken with the twisting, turning, time-traveling books. The show can sometimes be a bit of a mess when it comes to plot, getting mired in the political goings-on instead of laser-focusing on the core trio of Geralt, Ciri, and mage Yennefer, but it shines whenever it gives those three center stage. It’s then that you remember: Cavill was made to play Geralt.
Cavill’s physicality and familiarity with Sapkowski’s universe shine in every moment he’s on screen—he perfectly captures the quiet kindness and probing philosophical mind that Geralt displays so often in the books. Geralt can kill you with his bare hands, but he can also have a riveting debate with you about war and race relations, and Cavill embodies that perfectly. I don’t know if I’d call Cavill an excellent actor, but he is an excellent Geralt.
There’s also a special kind of physicality that Cavill brings to the role that’s largely rooted in his ability to do many of his own stunts. While watching this season, I found myself wondering: “Did Cavill take notes from Tom Cruise while on the set of Mission Impossible: Fallout?” Cruise famously does almost all of his own stunts, continuously pushing the limits of what a Hollywood actor can pull off on-screen, and the payoff is obvious: the Mission Impossible films are the best modern action movies by a country mile.
Netflix
Cavill has been working with stunt coordinator Wolfgang Stegemann since Fallout—the two worked together to choreograph the iconic one-shot fight scene from The Witcher season 1, so the connection isn’t all that far-fetched. And Stegemann told GamesRadar that “it’s beautiful to see an actor who’s doing all the stunts themselves. I have a great stunt team but I don’t need a stunt double for him. [This means] I’m able to shoot special camera positions that I would never be able to do without him.”
Will Hemsworth have that kind of dedication to his role? The Witcher series often falters in plot progression and occasionally in character development, but whenever Cavill is fighting in a scene, you can’t look away. And in Season 3, he gets fight scenes and emotionally deep moments in spades, reminding us time and time again that he’s an excellent Geralt of Rivia.
The Witcher without Cavill
Bizarrely, even Netflix seems determined to reassure viewers that yes, Cavill is still in this season of The Witcher. A recent marketing campaign projected the words “Yes, he’s still Geralt in season 3 of The Witcher” on buildings and cliff faces around the world. Sadly he won’t be Geralt in season 4 of The Witcher, and that’s what I’m most worried about.
The Witcher Season 3 is split into two parts with the second set of episodes coming later this month. The first set of episodes ended on a cliffhanger, making the wait for those new episodes feel just a bit longer. Spoilers below for the books, but the second half of the season will likely kick off with the Thanedd coup, an infamous battle that horrifically injures Geralt. He carries that injury with him for the rest of the series, and the aftermath of the coup has major reverberations throughout the entire continent: It dissolves the mages’ Brotherhood, it separates Ciri from Geralt, it crowns an elven queen, it imprisons Yennefer.
The Thanedd coup will drastically shift the series’ pace—expect it to move rapidly, expect the stakes to be upped tenfold, expect your heart to be broken over and over again. It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Cavill shouldering the exciting future of The Witcher, but I’ll keep an open mind. Maybe Hemsworth has got the chops, and his Geralt of Rivia will be one for the ages. The Witcher showrunners have promised a “flawless” and “meta” transition from Cavill to Hemsworth, so I’m at least looking forward to seeing how they pull that one off.
The Witcher Season 3 Volume 1 is streaming now on Netflix; Volume 2 is due out on July 27.
Redfall, a vampire shooter out this week on Xbox and PC, was developed by Arkane Studios, the same team behind classics like Dishonored and Prey. It’s one of Microsoft’s first-party exclusives for 2023, a big release for the company’s Game Pass subscription service. And by most accounts, it sucks.
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We’re currently playing the game together for our own impressions, which will be published soon, but in the meantime—because I find the reception so extraordinary given the scale (and price) of the release—I thought I’d roundup some of the impressions and review pieces out there from outlets who managed to receive code ahead of Redfall’s release (we, obviously, did not), or have been updating a review-in-progress piece as they go along.
Ultimately, Redfall is a game that should not have been released yet. Its litany of bugs hampers the gameplay loop of exploring its world with friends, and that loop itself feels compromised by elements that are poorly executed and ill-suited to the team implementing them. I can’t pretend to know whether Arkane chose to make a loot-shooter or was assigned to make a loot-shooter, but I can tell you what it feels like: one of the best game studios in the world suddenly made toothless.
Redfall is ultimately not up to Arkane’s usual standards. It feels rushed, unfinished, and unsatisfying to play. Single-player is hampered by a squad-based open-world shooter structure, multiplayer held back by odd decisions, and decent gunplay is marred by uninspiring mission structures. It’s a confusing game, full of contradictions, and the result is unfulfilling.
With Redfall arriving at IGN just a couple of days ahead of its official release date we haven’t had enough time to complete a final review yet – certainly not without becoming a nocturnal monster myself and staying awake all weekend. However, after several sessions – solo, co-op with a friend, and also in a group of three – I must admit I’m thoroughly underwhelmed by Redfall’s vanilla missions and lifeless world, and very disappointed at its lengthy list of display issues and bugs.
Redfall fails to compel on nearly every level, not just in its uninteresting story, but also its all-too-familiar gameplay. Not only does Redfall feel like a game stuck in yesteryear, even its performance finds a way to disappoint.
Eurogamer’s early impressions are actually quite optimistic, writer Christian Donlan preferring to reserve final judgement until the game was done, but I thought his anecdote at the end here was a pretty good summary of the game’s visuals:
So how is it ugly? It’s technical stuff, I think, and while I’ll leave that to Digital Foundry I’ll say that the edges – technical term – are a little rough. Textures sometimes pop in late or not at all, so those beautiful trees are always bursting into fiery life a little too close by, and at one point the classic immersive sim storytelling graffiti on a wall was weirdly pixellated. Character models are still and oddly lit. I should add here, I’m trying to be objective, which is always a mistake. I think the patchy textures – yes, I’m really about to say this – gives the town a slightly impressionist feel. The waxy characters are wonderfully waxy, the kind of things you might meet on a trip through a haunted Hall of Presidents. Even so, there’s no ducking the fact that my wife came into the room when I was playing, looked at the screen in horror and said, “Jesus! What happened to Fortnite?”
I should note not all reviews and impressions pieces are so down! If you head over to Metacritic you’ll find some outlets—many of which I’ve literally never heard of, but still—have given the game positive scores, like We Got This Covered, who rated it 4.5 stars out of 5, saying:
With rich, beautiful open worlds, a multitude of weapons, and a wide variety of enemies to square off against, Redfall amazes. Players won’t regret staking their claim on Arkane’s latest masterpiece.
OK. Enough with the professional reviews. Let’s see what people who paid for the game—and if you bought this instead of playing on Game Pass it was a full-price $70 release, an important point to remember here—have to say. Here’s a selection of some of the top Steam reviews at time of posting:
Ignoring the performance issues, this game is bad. The AI is pathetic, even on the highest difficulty. The controls are clunky. The graphics are average. The world is empty. I don’t understand why these companies think they can start charging $70 for unfinished garbage. I couldn’t even stomach an hour of this game.
Extremely average and unfinished game. Poor performance on PC and riddled with bugs and glitches.
I’ve heard great things from Arkane, but this is not it. I played with two friends, who also refunded. Going to try and give it a go tonight on the $10 PC Game Pass instead. But that first hour was clear to me: this is not a $70 AAA release.
I’m going to wind up with that last one because, having played it for most of yesterday, it’s actually the closest to my own experiences with the game. This plays like a remaster of a PS3 shooter. It’s an unfinished concept piece, a pitch project that somehow made its way to retail.
It’s tough to explain how raw the whole thing feels without playing it yourself. Even the fonts look like placeholders. Arkane is a studio responsible for some of the most important first-person games of the last decade; to see their name attached to this just…really bums me out.
Anyway! Like I said, our own impressions will be coming soon, so check back to see if a few days of multiplayer madness will have our team (not me, I live on the far side of the moon) thinking any differently to these reviews.
Nine years ago, Super Mario 64player toyuru2 wall-jumped his way up the slide in Cool, Cool Mountain, sending the plumber into the void–but not before grabbing a 1-up mushroom. At the time, it was a feat, as nobody had ever gotten the mushroom. But then, a new challenge emerged: was it possible to grab the mushroom without dying at all? Now, years later, a speedrunner has answered that question through the use of special tools.
First released back in 1996 on the Nintendo 64, Super Mario 64 is one of the most famous video games ever released. It was Mario’s big leap into 3D and helped create the blueprint for what a 3D platformer would be. Like any other game, it features a number of oddities, like items and enemies that exist outside the bounds of where the player can go. These seemingly “impossible” items became a fixation for the community, like this one coin that took 18 years for anyone to collect.
27 years later, players are still speedrunning the game, creating mods for it, porting it to the PC, and trying for those hidden coins and other secrets in this beloved 3D platformer. In this case, the impossible item clips out of the tunnel before players can normally reach it, though as you can see in this video, it actually spawns in the tunnel at first. Technically, unlike other “impossible” items, this 1-up has been grabbed before–what’s different now is that it’s been grabbed by someone without dying. And all they had to do was just jump between two walls for over an hour.
PaLiX’s tool-assisted method has Mario immediately leap out of the level and fall to the finish line below. Then they jump between two walls for an hour and a half. Slowly Mario climbs up the wall and eventually reaches a point where he seems to lock up. Then, using an exploit involving how the game calculates where Mario is in relation to the floor, PaLiX is able to break free and butt stomp onto the 1-Up.
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Even though this video does involve some emulation tools that help perfectly pull off the tricky moves and jumps, it’s still interesting to see a player grab this power-up without kicking the bucket. Will it be possible for someone to one day actually pull off this trick on an N64 or other platform without tools? Maybe. People continue to do wild shit in this game. For years, the hardest glitch in Super Mario 64 speedrunning was considered impossible to do by a human without the use of tools, until of course someone did exactly that. So at this point, I’d say anything is possible.
