Popular modder Akaki Kuumeri has continued his series of creating custom-made accessibility accessories by building a one-handed Nintendo Switch controller.
Sharing the creation on his YouTube channel, Kuumeri posted the step by step development process of the one-handed adapter, the final version of which allows players - left or right-handed - to fully play Nintendo Switch games using just one hand.
YouTuber Akaki Kuumeri has designed an attachment for the PS5 DualSense that lets you play with one hand. The 3-D printed piece was created for a design contest. https://t.co/yvIy241fgTpic.twitter.com/1PATqDnu6f
Having previously created one-handed adapters for the PlayStation 5's DualSense controller and the Xbox Series controller, Kuumeri commented that the Joy-Con adaptation was the easiest to do since the pair of controllers can be literally switched around to serve different purposes.
Kuumeri utilises this when creating the Joy-Con adapter, flipping over one of the Joy-Cons so that the left stick can be pushed against another surface to move the character around in the likes of Breath of the Wild. He also inverts the inputs (so that left is left and right is right), and brings control of the triggers and face buttons over using 3D printed connectors.
EA’s latest entry in the long-running Madden series sees some upgrades over the previous-generation game, including improved visuals, presentation, and animation. Today’s analysis is all about graphics, performance, and comparisons between platforms and generations, though I won’t be delving into the details of the sport simulation.
Performance
I’ll be looking at PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, as well as PS4 Pro as the representative for the previous-generation consoles. All of these target and hit 60fps at all times during gameplay, though with the stop-start nature of the game, these segments are rarely that long. The only time I noticed a drop from that solid 60fps line was when the game shifts into realtime replays, inaugural segments, or video wipes, as these can cause short pauses that blend between them, and the video wipes all run at or around 30fps. That said, since these segments represent the TV presentation style, they weren’t of any consequence to gameplay.
The only exception to that 60fps target is in the Quality mode replays on Series X and PS5, which now target 30fps rather than 60. This is the case on PS4 Pro and Series S as well, which only have a single mode, rather than Quality or Performance to choose from. Again, the impact here is minimal considering these sections are non-interactive, and aside from the shifts into these segments, they hold that 30fps with no issues and then blend back to 60fps once play resumes. All in all, every format and mode delivers a smooth and consistent level of performance.
Loading is fast on current generation consoles, with PS5, Series X, and Series S all coming in less than three seconds from the menu. The PS4 Pro is slightly slower at around ~10 seconds, and also has other changes and cutbacks on presentation style, video quality and character models.
Graphics
The current generation version does offer upgrades in a couple of key areas, the biggest being the Field Sense animation system. Many may recognise this in other guises, such as Naughty Dog’s similar Motion Matching system used in The Last of Us Part II, or Ubisoft Motion Blending as we saw in For Honor. It has also been used in previous FIFA titles from EA, which did include last generation consoles. But here, this new motion blending technology is only available on the PS5, Series X and Series S. This aims to keep a multitude of motion-captured animation cycles in memory and then dynamically blend between many of them in real time based on a multitude of factors as they happen, such as foot position, speed, velocity, and even mid-air collision. The aim is to achieve even more realistic and convincing human movement and interaction during the games and replays.
Realistic human movement is a key aspect for sports games like this, where the human eye and brain is naturally good at detecting when things like body weight, limb position, and collision feels and looks unrealistic. And in this sense the new entry is a great first step to improving the quality of the simulation. In comparisons of last gen and current, you can certainly see cleaner, more organic shifts of animation routines as players turn, spin, and get tackled. At times, the PS4 Pro version highlights key frame jumps between two or more animation cycles as models warp into a new position or jump out of current ones. By contrast, the FieldSense system does increase the accuracy of motion – this is highlighted best in the replays, which can show some excellent levels of blending.
However, the main issue is that this is not always the case, and it does not hide every single blend. This means the ones that do show up stand out more, as the quality is not consistent. This is compounded by heavy clipping in many areas – in both gameplay and replays – as well as some severe gulfs in model quality at times – which are upgraded on the new generation systems also – likely due to the extra bone-rigged models required to run this new animation system. You can see the models look smaller and less, well, buff in some sections, as do some of the various pyrotechnics and particle systems. But they do offer increases in triangle count, which can be seen on the deformation of arms and other areas when skeletal rigs move into extreme positions. This means the new consoles are pushing more polygons per frame whilst computing higher bone density on animation and blends, which is overall better. As is the lighting which offers better per pixel coverage, higher shadow, and shading quality, along with higher detail in stadiums, grass, and textures.
Finally, the physics-driven hair system can also improve model quality, as seen here with Mr Madden himself, offering much denser geometry of hair rather than the flat, motionless hair fins of the PS4 Pro version, though this does vary depending on the model in question. While some might argue that some visual changes are not necessarily an improvement, ultimately the current-generation versions do offer better detail, shading, materials, and post effects over the last generation versions.
Resolutions
All of this means we get some varying numbers in resolution counts. Starting with the lowest first, the Series S offers a fixed 1920x1080 output both in gameplay and real time cinematics, which is not a surprise as FIFA games which use the same engine were also 1080p. The shock may come from the PS4 Pro, which targets 3200x1800 and uses a checkerboard resolve to hit that level, meaning the final output image is sharper than the Series S, but it has lower quality pixels, and the heavy chromatic aberration the game uses lessens the sharpness of the higher resolutions.
The chromatic aberration also affects the bigger consoles, which both target 3840x2160 in the Quality mode always, with the noted 30fps frame rate during replays. This is the sharpest image you can choose and overall the game is very stable in most sections with quite a flat lighting model and minimal specular or noisy pixels cropping up. The difference comes in the Performance mode, which targets 3200x1800 to enable the doubling of the real time replays to 60fps – but either this is dynamic or the checkerboard technique used here can falter, meaning we can get counts down to 2560x1440 on both consoles. In gameplay both modes target the same levels and outputs, which use a checkerboard technique to present 3840x2160, meaning the change to Quality mode only increases the replay resolutions along with increases to the bokeh depth of field, which can revert to a cheaper Gaussian blur filter in dense geometry shots, along with subtle shadow and hair changes – but this may be as a result of the lower resolution buffers. In all, even in side-by-side comparisons, the differences show that the increase in resolution is not as noticeable as the reduction in frames per second. Regardless, the choice being present is the best thing – and most importantly gameplay is identical from both, so pick your poison.
The increases that Madden 23 offers on current generation are good, but not great. Most players will likely not notice the improvements in the animations system in moment-to-moment gameplay, and even less so the increases in model quality and replay frame rates. Also, the improvements here are not consistent or even always better than the older models – at times crowds can look equally bad with fixed vertices being ill-placed with no movement when it should be cloth, low polygon arms being front and center in replays and heavy collision, and obvious jumps between animation cycles still cropping up. I hope this is a basis for the team to work hard on significantly expanding the move sets and blending techniques in use here for the next game in the series, along with redesigning many of the player models to work better with this new system and increasing the fidelity on offer. Other small changes would also be welcome, such as updating or even interpolating the video wipes to 60fps when in the performance mode, so they do not look as jarring. All in the boosts that Series X, Series S, and PlayStation 5 players get are certainly welcome and visible, but I doubt last gen players will feel they are missing out on much.
Colossal Cave - Reimagined by Roberta Williams is coming to more than PC and Meta Quest 2. In an announcement exclusive to IGN, Cygnus Entertainment confirmed that the upcoming remake will also be coming to Nintendo Switch.
"Colossal Cave - Reimagined by Roberta Williams will soon be accessible to gamers worldwide on an additional platform," Cygnus Entertainment founder and CEO Ken Williams said in a release. "We hope to bring back the spirit of traditional adventure games for devoted fans who grew up with the original game and the new generation of explorers alike. We believe bringing Colossal Cave Reimagined by Roberta Williams to the Nintendo Switch will help us do that."
Colossal Cave was originally conceived as a VR adventure in partnership with Unity, but its move to the Nintendo Switch means that it will be portable, too. It's based on the seminal 1970's text adventure that tasked players with finding "all the treasure" in an intricate labyrinth populated by trolls, bears, and pirates.
Here's the official synopsis:
Immerse yourself in a gorgeous Eden untouched by mortal hands…until now. Enchanted with the prospect of magical discoveries, plant a confident boot on the path ahead, unhindered by the looming threat of danger. Armed only with a trusty lantern and a limited supply of oil, cast a curious eye through massive underground labyrinths in search of something extraordinary.
Tread lightly through winding caverns so as to not awaken a magnificent dragon from its slumber. Encounter whimsical creatures of both friendly and cruel intention including adorable dwarves, brutish trolls, and fearsome pirates lurking within the corridors. Employ magic and wit to unveil mystical secrets and decrypt complex environmental puzzles. Discover exciting easter eggs and collect all 15 priceless hidden treasures before venturing back to the mortal realm.
Talking with IGN at GDC, Roberta Williams said that the remake would be as true as possible to the original, even going so far as to use all of the original source code and narration. Williams also said she doesn't plan to include any of her own puzzles.
"I want people that have played this game... to feel yeah, this is right," Williams said. "This is Colossal Cave. It's history. I get to see it now."
Colossal Cave does not yet have a formal release date, but is expected to be out this fall. It will be available for $39.99 on Nintendo Switch.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Ulf Andersson, who worked on Payday and Payday 2, is returning to the co-op heist genre with his studio 10 Chambers. During an interview with NME, the developer revealed that his upcoming game will be a cyberpunk style, team-based action game.
“I'm back on the heist s**t, basically,” he said. “So, it's a heist cooperative FPS, and it has a sort of a techno-thriller theme. I read a lot of sci-fi books, and so imagine everything that cyberpunk is inspired by, and a ton of other s**t.”
The Payday games were defined by heavy action – gunning your way out of a bank and making off with as much cash as you could cram into a sports bag.
However, Andersson’s upcoming game isn’t that. “This one won't be constant shooting,” he explained. “Payday had a massive problem where the action would ramp up and then it would just stay ramped up.”
Andersson struck out on his own as CEO and founder of 10 Chambers after working on the two original Payday games, and the new studio is clearly taking a different approach to their upcoming heist game… but how it all works out remains to be seen. Either way, it looks as though it won’t be as difficult as its previous game, GTFO.
“You can sneak for an hour, at least, and then just f*****g die, right?” he said about GTFO. But his next game will be a bit more forgiving. “So, it's not gonna have that hardcore thing to it. It is more mechanically smooth, or you could say, easier to play.”
IGN’s review of GTFO said: “While the symptoms of its early access state may be keenly felt where breadth of content is concerned there is no shortage of depth in GTFO. It’s clever, creepy, and already surprisingly polished, and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.”
As for the upcoming game, it doesn’t have a name yet… or a release date. “We haven't put a date on it,” said Andersson. “We don't want to miss a deadline or overpromise. We're in pre-production at the moment, but things are ramping up quite fast.”
Sony has announced a committed expansion into mobile gaming by establishing the PlayStation Studios Mobile Division and acquiring Savage Game Studios to develop "a AAA mobile live service action game".
The new division will develop "innovative, on-the-go experiences based on new and existing PlayStation IP that meet PlayStation Studios’ high-quality standards" and will operate independently from console game development.
"The PlayStation Studios Mobile team is focused on creating new experiences for players through innovative, on-the-go gaming based on new and existing PlayStation IP."
"PlayStation Studios must continue to expand and diversify our offering beyond console, bringing incredible new games to more people than ever before," continued Hulst. "Acquiring the talented team at Savage Game Studios is another strategic step towards that goal.
"I’m really excited about what Savage is working on and I’m confident they will deliver a high-quality experience. Our move into mobile, like our expansion into PC and live service games, strengthens our capabilities and our community, and complements PlayStation Studios’ purpose to make the best games that we can."
Savage Game Studios was founded in 2020 by veteran developers Michail Katkoff, Nadjim Adjir, and Michael McManus, who collectively have decades of experience working at developers including Spider-Man's Insomniac Games, World of Tank's Wargaming, Clash of Clans' Supercell, Farmville's Zynga, and Angry Birds' Rovio.
It's unclear if Savage Game Studios' game will see the creation of a new PlayStation IP or be incorporated into an existing franchise, but as it was in development for two years ahead of the PlayStation acquisition, it's perhaps more likely that we'll see something brand new.
A leak of a potential logo for the upcoming Xbox Game Pass family plan has seemingly leaked and it looks to confirm that Microsoft is choosing to focus on branding this new subscription as the "Friends & Family" plan.
This logo is very much in-line with Microsoft's current Xbox Insider test in Colombia and Ireland that allows users to share their Xbox Game Pass Ultimate benefits with up to four people in the country where they live. It's important to note there is no restriction on sharing these benefits with immediate family members, which very much gives weight to the friends part of "Friends & Family."
Xbox Game Pass for Console and PC is currently $9.99/month, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate - which offers all the benefits of the cheaper tier and Xbox Live Gold, access to Xbox Cloud Gaming, and more - costs $14.99/month. There is no word as of yet how much this potential "Friends & Family" plan would cost.
I’m sitting across a table from Hideki Kamiya, mildly taken aback. This is, in part, because his response bypassed our translators entirely and came directly in English. Mostly, though, it’s because – I’m realising as my mind races to reshuffle the subsequent questions – this is not the typical answer given by an industry legend when asked how often they’re able to actually play games.
A much more typical answer is some level of remorse over not being able to play much these days, but that they found titles X or Y interesting over the past year or two. Be it because of a supernatural need for very little sleep, incredible talent and time-management, or perhaps just games really being his core pastime, Kamiya is very much not one of the typical.
Soon after, I am being schooled on not knowing enough about Columns. He is in disbelief that I dislike the music, until it becomes apparent that I’m only familiar with the Mega Drive game. According to the mind behind Devil May Cry and Okami, it’s all about COLUMNS 97 on the Sega Saturn: “The music is really good! You should try it!”
He’s right, it turns out. Columns on the Saturn sounds much better than the Mega Drive version in every way. But that’s not really the part of Kamiya’s after-hours gaming that is of particular interest. What stands out is how it reflects his preferences.
“I play a lot of classic games, Arcade Archives stuff,” he says. “I’m not up to date. It’s kind of a weak point.”
I play a lot of classic games... I’m not up to date. It’s kind of a weak point.
While he does acknowledge that his fixation with retro perhaps helps him to create “apparently more unique” games, he still feels that this is something of an Achilles’ heel. He tries to play and study more modern titles, but just keeps on getting drawn back to eras gone by. In some ways, it feels like he is now looking backwards, away from when he first entered the industry, back towards his earliest childhood memories of playing games in the less densely-populated prefecture of Nagano, when childlike innocence allowed one to see games as things that just kind of appeared sometimes, as if from the ether.
“From childhood onwards, I really liked games,” he explains. “I used to play them at these ‘game corners’ in department stores.” This is pretty easy to envision. Many Western readers, certainly, will likely have memories of two or three arcade cabinets begging to eat their change while waiting on an order in the local takeaway shop. “By the time I was in junior high, I would go to arcades. I just really liked to play games – just playing games, and nothing much else.”
During much of this time, games were purely a hobby: a favourite pastime, certainly, but nothing greater than that.
“It was only after I read a magazine that contained articles about Shigeru Miyamoto and Masanobu Endo – the director of Xevious – that my thinking kicked into gear,” he admits. “That article really inspired me. I started to think of games more as creative works that were crafted by people, that maybe I can create something like the games I loved as well.”
There was just one small problem: this was a young industry that lacked formal training pathways. Kamiya, it seems, got his break by making the right effort while groping around in the dark. “When it came to making games, there weren't really any game design-related courses at the time, it wasn’t something I could major in... so I just went for it.”
‘Going for it’ involved a lot more than polishing up a CV and filling in some forms. He wanted to be a designer, and so Kamiya went to the extent of producing full game-design documentation to send to various video game companies. “I had designed this entire world and made these characters and this story that I presented to these companies, but as a result of this, one company, Namco, wanted to hire me as an artist instead,” he says, laughing. Despite how he may feel about his first design attempts today, they also managed to land him an offer from Capcom.
I read a magazine that contained articles about Shigeru Miyamoto and Masanobu Endo... That article really inspired me.
This created something of a dilemma. “I had loved Namco’s games since I was a child,” Kamiya elaborates, while also making it clear that his feelings towards Capcom at the time were, to put it nicely, less enthusiastic. However, while Namco had interest in him as someone who could draw, the offer from Capcom was in the role of a planner / designer. “I had to choose between the ideal job at what I felt wasn’t the ideal company, or compromise my role to work for Namco. I was flip-flopping between them. In the end, I wanted a designer role, so I decided to work for Capcom.”
Times were changing, however, and for both better and worse the industry was moving away from those colourful Namco arcade titles that he had grown up loving. “I went to the show that preceded TGS and saw Namco’s booth. There were all of these games with sophisticated graphics. Watching Ridge Racer running at 60 frames per second was mind-blowing. Sega, too, was there with Virtua Fighter,” he says. The future of highly-detailed 3D games obviously excited the young Kamiya, and so when he found that Capcom’s presence was centred around a new revision of Street Fighter 2, his heart sank: “I was really worried and wondered if I had made a bad decision.”
It was perhaps the audacious way that Kamiya had applied for this work that proved his saving grace. As highlighted by Namco expressing interest in hiring him as an artist, the game designs that he had put together and sent in were visually rich and this is perhaps what secured his pass to work with the then-new 3D game developments he was so excited about.
“I was new and didn’t have any authority to choose my own projects,” he says. “But Shinji Mikami saw my drawings and thought I’d be a good fit for the cinematic aspects of his next game. Things such as setting camera angles and creating visual concepts for cut-scenes.”
And just like that, despite having no stomach for horror, Kamiya found himself working on Resident Evil. It’s a bit wild to think about, in hindsight. Resident Evil was his very first title, and from there he was bumped up to a game director role for the immediate sequel, Resident Evil 2. Despite Kamiya’s own general dislike of horror, hindsight has it making some sense that he was working on titles that traded so heavily in mood and atmosphere. He had entered the industry by accidentally impressing prospective employers with his artistic talent when he was trying to show an understanding of game design, after all.
Shinji Mikami saw my drawings and thought I’d be a good fit for the cinematic aspects of his next game.
When asked if the atmosphere-first nature of Resident Evil rubbed off on him in any way, Kamiya takes a moment to think, likely wanting to say something more useful than a variant of maybe-but-also-maybe-not.
“At first, when working on games such as Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and Okami, I would focus on an image – say, this stylish character with two guns for Devil May Cry – in my mind and have a very good artistic picture of what I wanted this to be,” he says, opening up a bit about his early design process. “As far as mechanics were concerned, I really relied on the talent and abilities of those around me to make it all come together.”
This approach lasted for some years, and while, when asked, Kamiya struggles to suggest what it is that has enabled him to remain relevant for so long, his openness about a continued need to learn, even when in senior roles, likely plays a part. “It wasn’t until I got to designing Bayonetta that the mechanics, as well as the style and design,” he tells us without a hint of hesitation, “that it all finally seemed to come together and I had this really strong grasp on everything.”
Not that Bayonetta has ever been in want of style. I mention that my favourite parts of the first game were the manic moments of Sega fan-service, particularly when it went all-in on After Burner. This is hardly an isolated example, and Kamiya seems to enjoy such indulgences: “When we were developing Bayonetta 2 on Nintendo hardware, they were kind enough to let us slip in some Nintendo IP; in the form of alternative costumes, for example,” he says. “It’s easier to do this with companies that you’re actively working with, but the one I would like to do next would be to work with Konami and do something with the Gradius IP. I think it would make the fans happy if I could use some of the music.”
Without the need for further prompting, he also adds, with just a hint of regret, that “I actually wanted to make a sequel to the game Getsu Fūma Den, but one already came out.”
Kamiya clearly isn’t lying when he says that he is playing mostly classic games, the stuff of his own childhood. It’s a theme that hangs in the air. While his entrance into the games industry was coloured by excitement for a future built from millions of texture-mapped polygons, the man we’re speaking to now, perhaps as a result of learning more and more about mechanics, or perhaps simply due to life experience, is giving greater importance to looking back. Notably, while he speaks of a variety of genres, the roads almost always end up curving back towards shmups.
In this sense, it seems unsurprising that his most recently-released work fits into this genre. Indeed, on the surface, SOL CRESTA – a sequel to a pair of 1980s shmups – seems like a long overdue work of self-indulgence, but for a good while the prospect of going so far as to twist the entire genre was on the table. What started as a dock-and-split gameplay idea caused sudden remembrance of the previous games, Moon Cresta and Terra Cresta. Platinum had always been about creating original titles, and Kamiya timidly consulted with Inaba about this conflict between original title and actual sequel.
The final product shows, pretty clearly, that an evolution of the original is where the team at Platinum landed. “Eventually, we collaborated with Hamster Corporation to help us create this style or… feeling, really. Like you’re in an arcade. We thought that harking back to this old-style arcade experience was maybe something that would get people’s attention.”
Did it get people's attention? Yes and no. The arcade cabinet set up at Platinum’s booth at this year’s BitSummit managed to stand out among an ever-growing collection of impressive-looking games on show, but it – and the series it belongs to – could never become the backbone of what Platinum is all about.
“Maybe, in terms of sales, SOL CRESTA wasn’t the most successful game,” Kamiya says. “But people have been enjoying it, so in that sense it’s a success.”
It seems pretty clear that this is a game that Kamiya was particularly enthusiastic about designing. There’s a genuine fondness for the types of games that inspired it, even a degree of hero worship. When he told us about the magazine article that inspired him to think about games creatively, it wasn’t Miyamoto that stood out to him. It was Masanobu Endo: “Endo was one of the bigger names in videogames at the time,” he says, keen for more people to know. “I believe, if I’m right, that he is one of the first people in Japan to have come out publicly as a game creator.”
This may go a long way in explaining that elusive staying-power that Kamiya himself has been unable to explain; too modest to deeply consider. His taste in games is very much his own, not guided by popularity, review scores or modern trends. His work comes from where he is at that moment, and right now, for all of the pies that he has fingers in, he seems to be particularly enjoying working on smaller projects: “In my current role, I’ve been able to be involved in many different projects. I’m very satisfied with the types of things I’ve been able to produce,” he says. “But, if Platinum decided to move forward only focusing on big, AAA games, I would find that very boring.”
Fans of Kamiya’s larger, more famous works have little to fear, though. The realities of keeping the lights on means that Platinum’s future will likely consist of plenty of both. “On the other hand,” he concludes, “if we focused only on more modest, targeted experiences like SOL CRESTA, we likely wouldn’t be able to turn enough profit to survive.”
Tim Henderson is an Australian games journalist who, despite living in Osaka for numerous years, somehow ended up organising this particular interview in Kyoto. He is (at least at present) not blocked on Twitter by Kamiya andyou can find him here.
