Last year, I caused a bit of a ruckus by saying the fashion at The Game Awards was indicative of the industry’s identity crisis. I lamented the t-shirt and blazer uniform and begged the men of the industry to do better. And though I said this not long before the 2022 awards show was set to kick off, it was clear that even in those few days, gaming’s biggest names scrambled to make sure they pleased one relatively unknown woman from New York.
Ahead of this year’s awards, I offered unsolicited fashion advice to try and ensure the awards ceremony felt as glitzy and as glamorous as host Geoff Keighley wants it to be. I even dressed a few of the attendees myself. But despite all that, I wasn’t sure what kind of looks we’d see when The Game Awards 2023 livestream kicked off on December 7.
This year, I attended the awards in-person, and had quite a few people tell me face-to-face that I singlehandedly made the attendees step up their fashion game. There was so much style both on and off the stage at the Peacock Theater last night, with dozens of people donning sequins and sparkles and Barbie-pink gowns and bright suit sets and funky accessories and sky-high heels. It truly was a feast for the eyes. Hell, Geoff dressed so well this year that someone dropped an f-bomb on stage over it.
So, I decided, just like last year, to gather some of the best-dressed attendees of The Game Awards 2023. Some of them were on-stage, many were off, all were fabulous. Click through to see who made the cut. You’re all beautiful.
There’s a trailer taking X, formerly Twitter, by storm of a coffee bean armed with two pistols engaging in acrobatic shootouts that’s giving Max Payne meets Just Cause with a bit of GTA sprinkled in, and I’m totally obsessed.
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Dubbed Killer Bean, the game is billed as a first-/third-person shooter with procedurally generated elements that affect everything from the characters to the story itself. Based on the Steam description, the project sounds ambitious.
“You are Killer Bean, a rogue assassin who takes out the trash in this world, one bullet at a time. The procedurally generated story changes every time you start a new campaign in this first-person/third-person, roguelike shooter,” the description reads.
Killer Bean
Playing as Jack “Killer” Bean, you were betrayed by the Shadow Agency. Thirsting for revenge, you set out to murk the people who backstabbed you, employing bullets, punches and kicks, and acrobatic slow-motion moves to get your vengeance. It’s like John Wick, but instead of playing as Keanu Reeves, you’re…Keanu Bean. Pun aside, Killer Bean uses procedural generation in an exciting way: Everything changes when you play, according to its description.
“Every time you start a new single-player campaign, everything changes. The locations change, the missions change, the characters change, the bosses change, and most of all, the story changes. Characters who you trusted before, may turn against you. Enemies who tried to kill you, may end up helping you. Simple missions can turn into deadly traps. No two campaigns are the same.”
That sounds fascinating if it’s executed well, especially considering its GTA/Max Payne/Just Cause vibes. I mean, watch that above trailer one more time. Killer Bean starts by butterfly twisting into a James Bond-looking sports car and immediately finds himself in a shootout with motorcycle-riding beans before jumping out in slow-motion to blast up another bean. It’s amazingly ridiculous, especially as you watch Killer Bean windmill to dodge bullets then take control of an attack helicopter to destroy some industrial-looking bridge. I’m not totally sure what’s happening here, but I’m all for it regardless.
While this may be the first big-budget Killer Bean game, it isn’t the first to come out. Based on two short animations from 1996 and 2000, as well as a feature-length film from 2008, the franchise saw the side-scrolling action platformer Killer Bean: Unleashed release in 2012 for Android and iOS devices. I played a little bit of it, and yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous. It’s got in-app purchases (that you can circumvent by watching ads), clunky touchscreen controls, and a plethora of levels to shoot through. It isn’t exactly an enjoyable experience, but it does provide a semblance of an idea of what the big Killer Bean game might play like.
Killer Bean doesn’t have a release date, but you can wishlist it on Steam now.
If you were feeling nostalgic for old-school Max Payne, the perpetually grimacing star of Remedy’s iconic third-person shooter of the same name, take heart. There’s now a mod for Max Payne 3 that brings back the character’s unforgettable OG face—based on Remedy Creative Director Sam Lake—squint and all.
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For the uninitiated, Max Payne is a 2001 third-person shooter developed by Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Alan Wake, Control, and Quantum Break. The game featured the likeness of Sam Lake, a Remedy staff member who became known for lending his very structured face to the game’s protagonist. But Lake’s time as Payne’s face soon ended, as both Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne and Rockstar Studios’ Max Payne 3 changed course, with the former NYPD detective being modeled after actors Timothy Gibbs and then James McCaffrey in those sequels. However, modder AlexSavvy has now released a Sam Lake mod on Nexus Mods that puts Lake’s memorable mug back into Max Payne 3.
AlexSavvy
The mod “brings back the original look of Max Payne from the first game” so you can basically play as Sam Lake’s Max Payne in Max Payne 3. That game was pretty graphically sophisticated in its time, so making this mod required AlexSavvy to alter the fitting of every single costume to match Sam Lake’s body, and also model all the different hairstyles Payne sports throughout the game’s narrative.
The modder sought to fully preserve all existing facial expressions and wounds, and also brought back Payne’s Hawaiian shirt and leather jacket combo from the first game. In total, the mod replaces some 98 in-game models and 66 textures to reconstruct Sam Lake’s likeness. As ever, even a seemingly simple mod can require a ton of work.
If early feedback is anything to go by, AlexSavvy nailed it. Certain Max Payne fans have always had a bone to pick with the character’s changed appearance in Max Payne 3, and while it may have taken over a decade, now they can finally enjoy the game as the Max Payne they know and love, who happens to look a lot like Sam Lake.
When the original Max Payne was ported to consoles in late 2001, I couldn’t get a copy fast enough. I wasn’t a PC gamer at the time, and so for a while I could only enjoy Max Payne through the internet and TechTV at the time. I was transfixed by the graphics and luscious time-slowing bullet time gameplay on display. And when I finally played it on my original Xbox, it did not disappoint. Now, having played a select portion of El Paso, Elsewhere, a modern spin on this classic, third-person shooter, I am delighted to have experienced the classic vibes of the original Max Payne once more.
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And, honestly, El Paso, Elsewhere is close to making them better than the original.
Expected to release in late 2023, El Paso, Elsewhere comes courtesy of Strange Scaffold, whose previous games have included Hypnospace Outlaw, a Strand-like (?), An Airport For Aliens Currently Run By Dogs(that’s the title, also an apt description), and most recently, Sunshine Shuffle, which got the dev in a little bit of trouble with Nintendo over jokes about child gambling (as one does). El Paso, Elsewhere also follows El Paso, Nightmare, a first-person shooter with similar retro vibes. But instead of aiming for head-mounted perspectives and center-positioned guns of yesteryear, El Paso, Elsewhere is a gritty shooter with the narrative and gameplay vibes of the first Max Payne, meaning you can slow down time to a crawl, upping your reaction time to increase your aim and take out multiple enemies at once But this time you’re going after friggin’ vampires instead of the mob. Though, six in one, really.
My preview of El Paso, Elsewhere went through the game’s first four chapters and, god damn it, I was sad when it stopped. Not only did it spark my nostalgic love of the first Max Payne, it did so with some genuinely great additions to this formula and a killer hip hop soundtrack that had me vibing the whole ride through.
In El Paso, Elsewhere, you’re taking on vampires and other hellish manifestations in a trippy, otherworldly motel. And in doing so, El Paso, Elsewhere, thus far, improves on one of the shortcomings of Max Payne and many other shooters that demand high bullet output but take place in otherwise realistic settings.
Game Design In Bullet Time
As fun as Max Payne is, one of the problems I always had was that, since your enemies are just mobsters and well-armed human beings, each gun battle is more or less the same—fun as though the loop is, there’s a lack of variety in terms of enemies. And on top of that, the amount of bullets you spit out tends to dilute the realistic premise to a certain degree.
Gif: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
That’s not a problem for El Paso, Elsewhere. Since the bad guys are evil things that go bump in the night, I’m more than happy to suspend my disbelief as to how many bullets are required to take these things down. That does come at the cost of Max Payne’s fantasy of two-way bullet exchanges rippling through the slowmosphere, but the trade off is that it makes the gun battles far more interesting as enemy types are more varied thus far.
The aesthetic shift of paranormal hostiles immediately makes a difference. Simply having more interesting-looking enemies coming at you instead of Max Payne’s endless hordes of dudes-with-guns™ breaks up the monotony. But it’s not just Max Payne set in Party City during Halloween season here.
Gif: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
By having foes with different kinds of attacks, you have to react differently, and thus make use of bullet time in more varied ways, be that dodging werewolves that leap at you, vampiric ghouls that burst out from behind crates, or from other unworldly begins that fire down large purple orbs at you, injecting a sense of verticality to the gameplay that isn’t always present in Max Payne. The pace of gameplay becomes more varied; I’m not just running from room to room trading fire with yet another nameless dude firing a gun at me.
Gif: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
Sure, Max Payne’s task of taking down the mob by the dozens, and dozens, and dozens, (or in the case of Max Payne 3, dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens….) is fun, but it’s a breath of fresh air to have something new to engage with.
Also, I never felt too overpowered. In this preview, El Paso, Elsewhere managed to strike a nice balance between giving me the player the power to slow down time and unload tons of bullets while also holding me to account for what I’d over indulge in, be that bullets, time stopping power, or, yes, painkillers.
Gif: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
I did find that I would run out of ammo and my bullet time meter if I wasn’t careful, meaning that while I had an edge over the hordes of evil creatures coming my way, I had to be strategic in how I used it. Do I use bullet time to be more accurate? Or do I use it to get a sense of my surroundings and determine just how bad the threat I’m facing is? I liked that delicate balance and it made the game feel alive beyond just the initial “oh, nostalgia! Let’s slow down time” feeling that I instantly felt. Managing my powers against ongoing threats was a rush I was eager to continue when the preview came to an end.
El Paso, Elsewhere is also very faithful to the narrative tone of Max Payne. As you use painkillers to heal yourself, the protagonist reflects on his diminishing sense of sanity as he continues to take drug after drug to keep pushing through. There is an ongoing narration from the protagonist that mirrors that of Max Payne’s own style of speaking and storytelling. And maybe because it’s about vampires, it doesn’t feel as campy as the original Max Payne somewhat feels in hindsight. And when you enter new areas, you’re hit with that delightful bass drum pulse and big title screen in bold white lettering ala Control.
Screenshot: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
While some environments did have me running around a bit guessing as to where I supposed to go, the ride through this preview was genuine fun and I was quite bummed to hit the end of the preview.
And you know, I can talk all day about how I think the enemy variety mixes things up pleasantly, or how there seems to be a nice balance of resource management, but feeling like I don’t want to put the gamepad down? That’s a feeling I like in a game.
El Paso, Elsewhere is expected to launch later this year, 2023, on PC and Xbox.
My life changed forever when I got a copy of Final Fantasy VII in 1997 (losing those discs has haunted me ever since). While I enjoy much of the 2020 Remake, the original experience is irreplaceably special to me. I start a new playthrough of it at least once a year, every year. Other times, I’ll just jump into a random save file I was working my way through at some point. It must be on anything I own that can run it.
Since 2015, the remaster (not Remake) has made the experience much smoother; and it’s always fun to occasionally mess around with mods that tweak character models or apply AI upscaled backgrounds to clean up the image.
The story, the characters, the landmark soundtrack with gorgeous compositions and tear-jerking melodies surpass the limitations of the rather humdrum sounds the midi-controlled sequencer on the PSX produced, it culminates into not just one of my favorite video games of all time, it’s one of my favorite media experiences, period.
Final Fantasy VII, in its original form, is an epic story of identity, friendship, love, and struggle in the face of insurmountable odds against seemingly unstoppable foes. I delight, as I did in my youth, blissfully getting lost in it. Its world, with blocky polygonal models might seem primordial by today’s standards, but to me its graphical limitations are an abstract that paints a bigger picture in my head—one that no amount of modern, hyper powerful game engines with all the bells and whistles will ever be able to touch.
And, yeah, you were right, Aeris; it was always the only way.
Thirsty Suitors is a cross between Scott Pilgrim’s battles with evil exes, stylish arcade skateboarding, and cooking segments all portrayed through a South Asian cultural lens. Outerloop Games’ RPG stars Jala as she returns to an old town with old flames, and frames their reconciliation through turn-based battles where the simple act of talking to each other is pumped up to ridiculous levels. There’s even a stage in which Jala enters a dream world where her exes appear as powerful, distorted versions of their own self-concept. Think Persona 5 but with fewer criminals. Jala explores her old town on a skateboard (more Jet Set Radio than Tony Hawk), and when she’s home with her family, she cooks with her mother in over-the-top, campy fashion. Thirsty Suitors portrays all of its storylines in this way, but there’s a grounded humanity at its core that will be exciting to see when the game launches on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch.
Valve’s classic Portal was recently re-released on Steam with some very fancy new visuals, including ray-tracing and DLSS support. That was great news for Portal fans, but it’s also great news for fans of all kinds of old PC games.
Before we go any further, I’ll explain the tech we’re talking about. RTX is the name given to a set of technologies used by graphics card company Nvidia that uses “ray tracing and AI technologies” to, very simply, make PC games look incredible. Here’s a trailer for Portal With RTX, the re-release of the game made with this tech, showing the improvements made to a game that most of us remember looking very 2007:
Portal with RTX | World Premiere
Now, the thing with RTX is that while in this case (and with Quake and Minecraft) it had to be put into the game by developers, Nvidia are also releasing a version of the tech with modders in mind. It’s called RTX Remix:
With RTX Remix, the game runs in the background and we replace the old rendering APIs and systems with RTX Remix’s 64-bit Vulkan renderer. This enables the addition of ray-tracing to classic games and it all updates in real-time as lights and objects move. Light can be cast from behind the player, or from another room, and in Portal with RTX, light even travels through portals. Glass refracts light, surfaces reflect detail based on their glossiness, reflections can be cast into the scene from behind the player, objects can self-reflect, and indirect light from off-screen illuminates and affects what you see.
Compared to Quake II RTX and Minecraft with RTX, the path-traced ray tracing introduced by RTX Remix is even more advanced, bouncing light four times instead of once, improving quality, immersion, and the simulation of real-world light. Additionally, we’ve also introduced several new ray tracing techniques that further improve quality while also being more performant.
Nvidia says that RTX Remix is “a modding platform” that will allow “modders of all ability levels to bring ray tracing and NVIDIA technologies to classic games”. Given it’s not out until 2023 I was expecting we were still months away from seeing what benefits it could bring to older games, but nope!
Modders like LordVulcan have found you can add RTX to some classic titles, right now, just by…dropping some files from Portal with RTX into another game’s folder on your hard drive and enabling some developer stuff in the console. That’s it. And it’s working on games like SWAT 4 and the original Max Payne.
Here’s some footage of SWAT 4taken by EiermannTelevision, which was released in 2005 and most definitely did not look like this at the time:
SWAT 4 RTX Remix
And here’s Half-Life 1, along with a little explainer on how it was done:
How To Get RTX in Half-Life: Source ~ RTX 4090 [RTX Remix] [4K]
None of those examples are perfect, but it’s incredible they work this well given how quick their implementation was. This is going to be so good when the actual RTX Remix is released in 2023, but until then it’s going to be cool seeing what other classic titles this slapdash workaround is compatible with!
