gaming

Ever since Nvidia revealed frame generation with the RTX 4080, I have been dreading the day that a game developer uses it as a requirement to get to an acceptable frame rate. And while we’ve gone almost four years without that happening, it seems like Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is going to cross that line. This past weekend, developer TT Games released the system requirements for the new Lego Batman game, and while at first glance they seem kind of reasonable for a Unreal Engine 5-based game, a closer look reveals that the company wants you to turn on frame generation just to hit 30 fps with the minimum settings. That’s not really how frame generation should work. If this isn’t just an error, it suggests that the minimum spec will only really be able to get 15-20 fps without frame generation, and at that point, no amount of AI frames is going to save it from being an unplayable mess. What is Frame Generation For? For the uninitiated, it’s easy to look at frame generation and just assume it’s a magical boost to your frame rate. But to understand why it’s a bad thing to lean on frame gen in order to hit 30 fps, it’s important to know how this technology actually works. Essentially, frame generation uses a machine learning model to generate frames based on a rendered frame and motion vector data taken from the game engine. While this frame is being generated by your GPU, the actual rendered frame is held back for a tiny bit, and then both the original frame and the generated frames are then paced out by either your CPU or your GPU. By its very nature, this process introduces latency, or input lag. At a higher frame rate, the added latency is barely noticeable, if at all, but there’s a reason that even AMD and Nvidia recommend that this feature is only turned on if you’re already getting a decent frame rate – typically at least 30 fps, but preferably 60 fps or above. At a lower frame rate, like the 15 fps suggested by these Lego Batman requirements, you’re already getting extremely high latency, and frame generation will only make it worse, even if it “looks” more smooth. Not to mention, at lower frame rates, there isn’t enough data generated by the rendered frames and the motion data to accurately generate an extra frame. That means, the lower your frame rate is when you enable frame gen, the more likely you’re going to run into artifacts and other visual glitches. It’s too early to know whether or not Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight will actually run at such a low frame rate without frame generation. But if it does, playing this game is going to be an awful experience unless you have a powerful enough gaming PC to brute force good performance out of it. Frame Gen with Old Hardware What makes things even weirder is that TT Games requires at least an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 to run Legacy of the Dark Knight, which would be a pretty modest spec on its own. But, even with this now-ancient graphics card, it’s still recommending frame generation – but DLSS frame gen doesn’t even work on this old of a GPU. Instead, for these older GPUs, TT Games is relying on FSR or XeSS frame generation, which still works much in the same way as Nvidia’s tech, but because it’s not accelerated by specialized cores in the GPU, it’s slower and not as accurate. That just makes a bad performance situation even worse. Crimson Desert was another game that relied on FSR frame generation to boost performance on handhelds like the Steam Deck or Xbox Ally X , for instance, but that game relied on this technology to reach 60 fps, not 30 fps. TT Games doesn’t even mention handhelds in the system requirements for Legacy of the Dark Knight, so it’s pretty safe to assume this game isn’t going to run well on portable systems. And that’s a shame, because it’s the type of game that’d be awesome to pull out on the train or on a long flight across the country. A Bad Port in a Sea of Good Ports What’s particularly wild about Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight having such ridiculous PC requirements is that the best PC games so far this year have been extremely well optimized. Crimson Desert, Resident Evil: Requiem and Pragmata have all run like a dream, and while none of these games are running on Unreal 5, they do make the latest Lego game stand out a bit more. What makes it worse is that these Lego games are designed for kids, and while there’s sure to be some out there whose parents have expensive rigs, it’s entirely possible that these inflated system requirements are going to place the game out of reach for many. Just based on the previews we’ve seen so far, Legacy of the Dark Knight does look very nice. It’s making good use of what appears to be ray traced global illumination and reflections, and the cloth textures on the detective’s cape look excellent. But if all of that comes at the cost of a playable frame rate, it’s just not worth the trade off – at least not on PC. If TT Games’ system requirements are accurate, most people will be better off playing this game on consoles where, at least for now, frame generation isn’t a thing. Although, it does seem like the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix will support the technology, so I’m sure this isn’t the last time we’re going to see developers try to pigeon-hole frame generation into a game that doesn’t run well in the first place. I hope I’m wrong. Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Battle of the Boroughs chronicles NYC public school kids competing in esports to understand civic policy. It's wild.

Sunset Visitor's upcoming game Prove You're Human bears an ominous title. Its debut trailer is just as provocative as its name lets on, and introduces us to Mesa, a seemingly rogue AI who has dreamt of her body and needs irrefutable proof that she is not human. The upcoming title from the developer behind 2024's critically acclaimed sci-fi narrative 1000xResist purports to address a growing anxiety around the notion of human performance and things that try to pass for us. Elsewhere, a late-night worker at a gas station must check IDs and reference a database filled with the specific characteristics that make each customer who walks through its doors an individual. A person. As the only clerk on the midnight shift, they are tasked with distinguishing friend from foe, person from nonperson. And when the time comes to defend themself, they are encouraged to blast anything that would harm them or impersonate any real human. At least, that's the way of the world in the upcoming game Shift at Midnight, which has become a viral hit before it's even released thanks to a spate of demos and glowing coverage from popular gaming personalities, like Iron Lung director Mark "Markiplier" Fishbach. Shift at Midnight features creepy skinwalkers that stalk the gas station. I don't think Prove You're Human will suddenly become a guns-blazing first-person shooter, nor will Shift at Midnight begin waxing philosophically. Yet despite taking different tacts and centering distinct forms of mimicry, these titles are in conversation and represent the future, both near and far, of a trend I've noticed: the sounding of an alarm. Continue Reading at GameSpot

The long-awaited Mortal Kombat II movie is finally upon us, and with it, our first introduction to Karl Urban’s version of beloved character, Johnny Cage. But what convinced him to take the part? IGN recently spoke to Urban, star of The Boys and The Lord of the Rings, and asked him exactly that. His answer was somewhat surprising, considering all the previous versions of the cocky, Hollywood character Cage that we’ve come to know and love/hate. “I think what made this project an easy yes for me [was] when I read the script and saw that Jeremy [Slater, MKII’s writer] had quite wisely steered away from making the character that classic ego-driven Johnny Cage that we just know from all the plethora of games and movies,” Urban explained. “So, he really stripped the character back and started him at a point where he has neglected his martial arts training,” Urban continued. “His career is in the tank. He has zero self-confidence. And it's at this very juncture that he gets called upon, you know, by Raiden and Sonia to ostensibly save the world. And I just thought that was so cool and interesting and easy to relate to because we've all been down in the dumps. I just found that the writing had a lot of heart, and it sort of set it apart from being, you know, just a fight movie.” It comes after the Australian actor admitted to knowing what a big role he’d stepped into upon accepting the job. “I definitely felt the pressure,” he said. “I remember when I got cast, I said to my two sons — who I actually played the game with, which was my first introduction to the world of Mortal Kombat — and I said, ‘Hey guys, I'm going to be Johnny Cage.’ And they were like, ‘Oof… Big fan base. Don't f**k it up.’ Of course, Mortal Kombat has been known for its fighting for more than 30 years, and, in particular, the violent extremes it takes it to. Will this more measured look at Johnny Cage signal a softer side to the series is about to be seen on screen? Well, maybe not quite, but its cast certainly appears to be going all-in on finding out who these characters are beyond their signature fatalities. Jax actor Mehcad Brooks recently revealed that he “actually sat with my therapist for about six sessions and figured out why he was who he was” ahead of filming the sequel after admitting that he struggled with fight scenes in the first movie. “I like to overthink a character and then underplay them,” he continued. “And then I think what happened for me was the first film, I didn't know if I belonged in the fighting scenes. So that was the hard part for me.” Mortal Kombat II hits theaters May 8, 2026. Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social .

Oh heck, colleagues, we got one: a promising videogame. Noirmancer is a first-person single-player stealth sim, heavily inspired by the original Thief, in which you are a hard-boiled sleuth with supernatural abilities. Think Humphrey Bogart, if Humphrey Bogart were a Dishonored character. Here are some things you can do: swim in midair, transform into vapour, stun alerted guards with pew-pew gestures, and chuck down telekinetic mats to serve as (usefully sound-absorbing) platforms. It might sound like a jumble, like one of those Marvel comicbook movesets they have to prune severely for the sake of a coherent film adaptation, but the whimsical stage magician hand animations and midnight jazz SFX absolutely sell the package. Instead of swinging a blackjack (noirjack?), you'll put mooks to sleep with a snap of your gloved fingers and a rattle of cymbals. Forget Bogart - this is Penn or Teller, whichever of them has springier knees. Read more

Resident Evil Requiem protagonist Grace Ashcroft seemed to be an instant hit with series fans following the game's launch back in February; so much so that when Nvidia unveiled an AI-powered DLSS 5 makeover for the character just a few weeks later, the pushback was strong and swift. And speaking to Eurogamer in the aftermath of that controversy, Requiem game director Koshi Nakanishi has said he sees the passionate response as positive, suggesting it means the development team got Grace's original design "right". Read more

Sony PlayStation users in the US could be due a collective $7.85 million (£5.8m) in refunds after a judge primarily approved a class-action settlement in an antitrust lawsuit. Read more

Back in March, Nvidia revealed unto the world DLSS5, the next version of its upscaling and frame generation tech. It was ugly as sin, turning Resident Evil Requiem's Grace Ashcroft into, in the words of our own James, yassified Instagram models . The response from developers and onlookers alike was overwhelmingly negative, but of course Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn't see it that way (he's still wrong, by the way). Yet amongst the mess is a glass half full outlook from Requiem's producer, Masato Kumzawa. Read more

A little while ago our deputy editor James 'RAM-bo' Archer said he wanted us all to get more involved with hardware criticism, because we all appear to think that videogames are powered by telluric currents and swearing. He offered me specifically the chance to write about a laptop - the relatively affordable (I stress, "relatively") MSI Cyborg 14 , loaned to RPS for a few weeks by Swipe Right PR. It was a grievous imposition, dealt out by somebody I had thought a friend. I do need a gaming laptop, and I am interested in the monstrous convolutions of the hardware industry, but I'm not really your guy for hot chat about keyboard depth and graphics card benchmarking. I care about that stuff a lot less than, to pick an example at random, climbing mountains. By happy coincidence, when James came knocking I was about to go on a 105 mile hike through the Eryri national park in Wales, including an ascent of Yr Wyddffa, the country's highest peak. The compromise was as obvious as it was irresistable: I would attempt to review the MSI Cyborg 14 while hiking up Welsh mountains. Read more

Unknown Worlds have released the PC system requirements for Subnautica 2 , the ocean exploration and survival game hitherto defined by extravagant legal clashes between publishers Krafton and certain ousted and/or reinstated UW executives. I fear they are going to make you cry. The system specs, not the executives. Read more

The Outer Worlds . It's a game I haven't thought about much since reviewing The Outer Worlds 2 last year, and it's just gotten its first patch in about three years. That's because Obsidian are planning to delist its base version from storefronts at the end of this month, leaving the more polished Spacer's Choice edition as the definitive Outer Worlds going forwards. They're also adding grenades to it, as an apparent make good aimed at pyromaniacs. Read more

After an earlier leak , we now have an official release date for Star Wars: Galactic Racer, the high-stakes, runs-based racing adventure set in a galaxy far, far away from developer Fuse Games . Read more

Publisher Krafton's removal from the Subnautica 2 Steam page may have been "blown up a little bigger than it was meant to", as developers from Unknown Worlds have reaffirmed that the partnership is ongoing. Read more