Hasta La Gadget!

The Dead Space remake has to be better than Dead Space. The original came out 14 years ago and imploded common ideas of what a horror game should be: It decreased the power of the headshot and stripped away all on-screen icons to immerse us in the ravaged corridors of the Ishimura, where we were stalked by half-human monsters with freakishly elongated limbs. Dead Space was terrifying and thrilling and surprising, and these emotions have only made the game shine brighter in our memories. This is the version of Dead Space that the remake has to compete with — the one that lives only in our heads, filtered by nostalgia. It seems like an impossible standard to reach. But I think the Dead Space remake nails it — mostly.

Motive Studio and EA held a demo event for Dead Space last month, and I got to play the first three chapters of the remake, stopping just after Isaac restarted the centrifuge. This was the full game in pre-beta form and I played on PC with an Xbox controller. It was immediately impressive by modern standards: The metallic rooms of the Ishimura were filled with crisp, horrific details, and the health indicator running up Isaac’s spine was clearer than ever. Tense instrumentals and mechanical humming noises rose and fell as he explored the ship, and sharp audio cues kept the sense of impending doom alive. Some of the sounds tapped directly into my nostalgia neurons, particularly at the save stations and while picking up items.

EA

The Dead Space remake has fresh voice acting, puzzles, storylines and mechanics, and an AI-driven director that maximizes the horror of each scene. This system doesn’t randomize the behavior of enemies, but it sets off environmental features like steaming pipes, harsh whispers and flickering lights. Whatever the horror director was doing during my playthrough, it worked — I was suitably scared in every setting.

In the demo, Dead Space followed a familiar cadence of dark hallways and towering necromorphs, but it also offered a handful of surprises. For one, the pulse rifle had a new alternative fire that threw out a small proximity mine, rather than a 360-degree spray. (Nothing about the plasma cutter was changed because the plasma cutter is and always has been perfect.) And then there was the revamped zero-gravity mechanic — instead of clinging to surfaces and leaping off of them in an extended jump, the Dead Space remake let me swim through the air, opening up new puzzle and exploration opportunities, especially in conjunction with the stasis and kinesis abilities. It all felt entirely natural, as if this was what developers wanted to do with Dead Space the first time around, but our 2008 hardware just couldn’t handle it.

EA

Honestly though, today’s hardware can’t handle this version of Dead Space, at least not in its current preview form. There are no loading screens in the remake and this feature caused critical problems during my playthrough. I encountered significant and persistent framerate issues throughout the demo, particularly after walking through doorways, as background loading kicked in. My game crashed once and I voluntarily restarted it another time, after slogging through multiple scenes of stuttering animations. The framerate issues were extremely frustrating. Isaac also felt sluggish at certain points, causing me to misfire my weapons or waste time stomping on already-dead enemies. I wasn’t the only player in the room to experience these problems, though some demos seemed to run just fine from start to finish. Developers at Motive made it clear they were aware of these issues and promised they’d be resolved before release day, but my preview experience was less than seamless.

Outside of the framerate frustrations, the Dead Space remake was a delicious slice of old-school video game terror. The necromorphs attacked from the shadows and screamed with guttural, humanlike cries, their long blades and bloody intestines lit only by the glow of Isaac’s plasma cutter. The Dead Space rhythm of stasis, shoot, stomp still worked wonders on nearly every enemy, and headshots didn’t do much to stop the onslaught. Resource management was a crucial aspect of play and each monster took multiple hits to die, leaving infected limbs and tentacles strewn across the floor after each encounter. Some elevator rides were also conspicuously long, as was Isaac’s time on the horizontal people mover — developers told me this was all on purpose, not to cheat in extra loading time, but to give players a moment to breathe and think about the horrors ahead.

I screamed within two minutes of playing the new Dead Space. Even in the crowded demo room, surrounded by PR people, developers and other reporters, the remake sucked me in and scared the hell out of me. It didn’t matter that I’d played the original when it came out in 2008; it didn’t matter that I knew what to expect out of the necromorphs and NPCs; the first three chapters of the remake were tense and terrifying.

EA

More impressively though, the new Dead Space made me smile. Even in its pre-beta form, the remake felt familiar but fresh, and I could’ve kept playing all day — well, if the framerate issues had abated. This problem worries me slightly, but there’s time for Motive to address it before the game hits PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles on January 27th, 2023. When the remake ran smoothly, its lack of a HUD was still effective as an immersive tool, the necromorphs were horrifying, and the upgraded mechanics slid smoothly into the frantic rhythm of the game. Overall, this was Dead Space, but better than I remembered.

In 2007, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core was a spin-off game; One part of a cash grab aimed at Final Fantasy 7 obsessives that were looking for something to play on the PlayStation Portable. It was a prequel-flavored slice of Midgar and the world of FF7 with real-time battles, baffling reels and enough goodwill and story lore to make it all just about work.

The story centers around a relatively minor (but popular!) character from the original game, Zack. Without spoiling the whys and whens (and 2020’s FF7R is shaking up the canon of Final Fantasy 7 anyhow), Zack has significant connections to Cloud, the big bad Sephiroth and other characters. Unfortunately, he dies before the original game starts and only appears in flashbacks.

As Square Enix tees up part 2 of its big-budget Remake project, Crisis Core Reunion gives newer players the chance to fill in the storyline blanks on Zack. He’s featured in post-credit scenes in Remake, suggesting he might be a more significant character going forward.

Square Enix has upgraded the character models, backgrounds, textures and the UI to bring some degree of graphical parity between Crisis Core and the recent Remake. There’s also voice acting across the entire storyline of the game. However, the character animations haven’t benefited from the same level of attention – it looks like Final Fantasy X’s HD remaster. That’s not so bad, but it’s a little disappointing from a PS5 game in 2022. Crisis Core Reunion has several character models that look almost good enough to appear in Remake, even if they move like characters in a PS2 game. (Sephiroth in particular, who appears briefly in the demo, seems more lovingly remastered than even Zack.)

It’s not all bad news. Now on a home console, you have two analog controllers to control camera and movement simultaneously: the PSP just had one analog nub. It makes the battles far easier to parse and focus on. And the battles were still enjoyable, if a little simple, during my demo.

Square Enix

Don’t expect the responsive battles and spectacle of Remake, either. Crisis Core’s slot-machine battle mechanism called “Digital Mind Wave (DMW) – no idea – is still here. During battles, it will cycle automatically through numbers and pictures of characters you meet through the game. If some of the numbers match, you can pick up health, ability points, improved chances of a critical hit and more. If the reel pictures match up, you can launch a powerful Limit Break attack that can do a lot of damage, buff your character and some other nice things. If the numbers line up as “777”, Zack will gain a level — and that’s still weird.

The battle system, like the visuals, is from a simpler time. You’ll fight with a combination of sword swings, spells, and techniques, topped up with Limit Breaks. You can block and dodge, which was crucial in the two boss battles I faced. But it all felt a little too basic.

I keep comparing Crisis Core with Remake, with its fluid animation, slow-mo menus and.. Millions of dollars of development capital. That’s a little unfair, but Crisis Core Reunion is here for FF7 fans looking dive deeper into the game’s lore — 2007 was a very long time ago.

Google Fiber’s sudden revival will include a dramatic boost to internet speeds. Google has revealed that it will offer 5Gbps and 8Gbps plans in early 2023 at respective monthly rates of $125 and $150. Both tiers will include symmetric upload and download rates, a WiFi 6 router and up to two mesh network extenders. The upgrades should help with massive file transfers while keeping lag and jittering to a bare minimum, according to the company.

Current customers, particularly in Kansas City, Utah and West Des Moines, can try the speedier plans as soon as November if they sign up to become “trusted testers.” If you’re eligible, Google will ask you how you expect to use the extra bandwidth.

This is a big jump from the previous-best 2Gbps service Google introduced in 2020, and could make a big difference if you’re a gamer or thrive on cloud computing. If a 150GB Microsoft Flight Simulator download takes 11 minutes at 2Gbps, the 8Gbps plan could cut that wait to less than three minutes in ideal conditions. It certainly makes typical cable internet plans seem expensive. Comcast is already offering 6Gbps service in some areas, for instance, but that costs $300 per month on contract and doesn’t yet include symmetric uploads.

Either way, the new plans represent a declaration of intent. Alongside the first network expansions in five years, the upgraded speeds suggest Google is getting back to Fiber’s roots. That is, it’s both raising expectations for truly fast internet access and (to a degree) spurring competition among incumbent providers. This could help Google pitch its other services, of course, but you might not mind if it gives telecoms an extra incentive to roll out ’10G’ and similar upgrades sooner than they might have otherwise.

Earlier this week, Google and hardware partners ASUS, Acer and Lenovo announced a somewhat surprising initiative to build Chromebooks expressly for cloud gaming. While many Chromebooks are a riff on the classic 13-inch laptop, the first round of these devices have large, high-resolution screens with fast refresh rates, anti-ghosting keyboards, powerful processors and a few software tweaks to better work with cloud gaming services like GeForce NOW.

All these laptops are set to be released by the end of October, but I got a chance to check out a pre-production version of Acer’s Chromebook 516 GE. Over the last week, I’ve played some games with it as well as put it through my daily work routine. I’ll need to test the final version before giving it a proper review, but the Chromebook 516 GE has a lot going for it, whether you play games or not.

Acer will offer a few configurations of this laptop, but the one I tried is up for pre-order at Best Buy. It features a 12th-generation Intel Core i5-1240P processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and a 16-inch, 2,560×1,600 display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The 516 GE is larger and heavier than a lot of Chromebooks, but 3.75 pounds is pretty reasonable for a 16-inch laptop.

As an all-purpose machine, there’s a lot to like about the 516 GE, assuming you’re OK with a computer that isn’t super portable. The screen is simply great to work on – with an effective 1,600 x 1,000 resolution by default, there’s plenty of vertical space, and I was easily able to have large windows (like a Google Doc and Slack) next to each other without feeling cramped. Its brightness rating of 350 nits isn’t going to blow you away, but it felt like plenty to me, and colors were nicely saturated without being exaggerated. And while the 120Hz refresh rate doesn’t change the basic experience of using a Chromebook, things like scrolling through YouTube or resizing windows did feel smooth and fluid.

The keyboard and trackpad are also great. The keyboard is large and spacious, and the keys have plenty of travel. It’s equally suited to a long writing session or playing games. And the computer’s large deck means the trackpad is also one of the bigger ones I’ve used on a Chromebook; it’s smooth and responsive. In a nod to its gaming heritage, the keyboard has an RGB LED backlight and an outline around the WASD keys, but these are about the only flourishes that make this computer feel like a “gaming laptop.”

The real question with this laptop, though, is whether it truly offers a better cloud gaming experience than other options (including other Chromebooks). I’m not ready to pass judgment on that yet, but both NVIDIA’s GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming worked without any issues here. I just plugged in my Xbox Controller and got to business. On GeForce Now, which I connected to my Steam account, I spent some time playing Portal and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, while I tried out favorites like Forza Horizon 5 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge via my Game Pass subscription.

There’s no doubt that this display elevates the experience, both simply because of its sheer size and its resolution. I haven’t tried any games that played at 120Hz yet, but everything I did play looked excellent – assuming my connection stayed solid. The 516 GE has a WiFI 6E chip inside, but as I don’t have a 6E router yet, that didn’t do me any good. And even when I was in the same room as my router, with a strong signal, the quality of my game streams varied significantly. Overall, GeForce Now feels much more reliable than Xbox Cloud Gaming. When playing Xbox games, the picture glitched out in significant, game-disrupting fashion pretty frequently. GeForce Now, on the other hand, I would experience the occasional burst of dropped frames, but the visuals rarely started tearing and distorting like they did on Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Neither were nearly as good as playing a locally installed game, and the overall experience isn’t all that different from what I’ve experienced doing cloud gaming on my MacBook Pro or other laptops. Acer can make a great laptop, but there’s only so much they can do about iffy streaming quality. And my internet connection isn’t exactly slow – I got about 170 Mbps down in a speed test I took when I was done playing.

For $650, Acer’s Chromebook 516 GE seems like a solid value – the combination of a powerful hardware, a great screen and keyboard and solid build quality make it a compelling device. Chromebooks with an i5 processor usually cost at least this much if not more, and the 516 GE has a fair number of features that make it unique. Whether this helps Google’s initiative to convince people Chromebooks are worth gaming on is another story altogether, but at the very least, Acer’s latest will likely be worth a look once it is available.

The season one finale of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power arrived today, along with a big reveal that… okay, look, every bit of this is a spoiler, so proceed at your own risk.

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