Star Wars Zero Company is a great take on the XCOM-like turn-based tactics game, and as I said in my review, it actually pushes the genre forward with a blend of new ideas and excellent execution. But as laudable as that is, Zero Company actually managed to accomplish something much more daunting: it made me care about the Clone Wars era of Star Wars.
I am an old-timer of a Star Wars fan, raised on the original trilogy, and I have distinct memories of watching the prequel films. I enjoyed them, I convinced myself I loved them, but over time the shine of "new Star Wars" faded and I was left with movies that were largely mediocre. I've since settled into a position taken by lots of Star Wars fans, and especially those my age: I give George Lucas credit for having some interesting ideas and a distinct authorial vision for his universe--in stark contrast to the Disney era's cloying emulation and fan-service--but the movies just aren't very good.
Clones, especially one squad member, are a major element in Zero Company
And to be clear, I have engaged in the expanded universe of prequel-era fiction. I read volumes of Star Wars books that have since passed into Legends canon, and more recently, I've generally kept up with most of the Star Wars shows, including most of the seasons of the Clone Wars cartoon show. For that I credit the excellent podcast A More Civilized Age, which served as my excuse to finally watch through the Clone Wars cartoon. Like the prequels, I found the cartoon had some neat ideas with mixed execution, but it did show that there was more room to explore this era. Lucas had created an untapped corner of the universe, and the Clone Wars cartoon (and later, Rebels) began to flesh it out and make it more interesting.
At the same time, this era of Star Wars always felt like a runner-up to me. Perhaps more creatively inviting than the sequel era, which has bafflingly been left almost entirely untapped with supplemental material, but still nothing compared to my beloved original classics.
Then I played Star Wars Zero Company.
Zero Company borrows settings, characters, events, and other story structures from the Clone Wars era, many of them established in the cartoon, and gives them a more mature glow-up. In many ways it felt like how Batman Arkham Asylum was a more mature (or at least T-rated) version of the classic Batman: The Animated Series cartoon. The grit and grime of this era of Star Wars, often so characterized by shiny chrome, felt more real. Hawks is a classic rogue hero in the mold of Han Solo, showing how that character type can work within the context of this period when the galaxy was nearing collapse but had not yet fallen into fascism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAgeglgSeA
When my decommissioned Clone Trooper, Trick, clashed with the Umbaran sharpshooter Luco Bronc, I understood it to be a continuation of the tensions established in the Clone Wars cartoon, given new context and space to breathe. When Anakin enters the fray, I could sense this being just one in dozens if not hundreds of adventures that the character had just-offscreen. For us, it was a significant life event, but for him it was a Tuesday. And when good-natured Republic envoy Bennic shows up wearing an officer uniform that is virtually indistinguishable from the Galactic Empire, the dread sets in as I witness these looming political changes from the perspective of a regular squad just trying to get by, rather than a character central to its events. It made the era feel more real to me.
Perhaps most importantly, Zero Company showed me through a combination of story and gameplay what I had heard but never really internalized before. The Clone Wars era is readymade with a variety of competing factions and interests--Jedi, Republic, Imperial, Mandalorian, Separatists, not to mention various alien races. I may have rolled my eyes when the prequels name-dropped the Banking Clan only to do nothing of significance with the concept, but that created space for other authors to explore. The Separatist element of the prequels felt perfunctory, but comes alive when you hear your accountant Runa Blask argue a form of space-libertarianism about the Republic's market policies.
So a Jedi, Mandalorian, Clone, and Umbaran walk into a bar
What the prequels and Clone Wars cartoon did, which I had never really appreciated until now, was create a massive canvas on which other artists have plenty of room to paint. That's something that can't be said even about my beloved original trilogy, which more-or-less consisted of two factions--Imperials and Rebels. In hindsight, this is why so many Expanded Universe books invented new factions like the Black Sun syndicate or Thrawn's sub-faction of Imperials. They had to, to create new storytelling opportunities. The Clone Wars era already has those opportunities ready to go.
The original trilogy will always have a special place in my heart, and nothing will ever replace it for me as peak Star Wars. I'm not a prequel convert, and I still think the movies are weak. But as a garden for new stories to grow, I understand now why the Clone Wars era is such fertile soil, unmatched elsewhere in the franchise.
Aliens Fireteam Elite 2’s launch earlier this week wasn’t without its issues, but it has soldiered on. It’s even recovered from its “mostly negative” reviews to merely “mixed,” which is probably more fair. Daybreak-owned Cold Iron Studios did dispatch a memo to fans on Thursday, telling them that it’s working on technical issues and asking […]
Just as with Insomniac's previous Spider-Man games, Marvel's Wolverine promises plenty of callbacks to its titular character's long history in comics, movies, and TV. But I got quite a laugh out of one detail in the game's latest trailer – a direct reference to an infamous meme originating in the beloved '90s X-Men cartoon.
The new game features trailer shows us a brief flash of what appears to be a level select screen, where you can replay previous missions. In the foreground, a text menu breaks down the stages by location and mission name, and on the other side we see a brief description of that level, alongside a tracker showing how many of its collectables you've missed.
In the background, we see Wolverine laying back in bed, longingly staring at a small picture frame he's holding in his hands. This, of course, is a tribute to the Wolverine Crush meme, which originates in X-Men: The Animated Series. You've probably seen '90s Wolverine staring at all kinds of things over the years, but in the original episode he's jealously looking at a photo of Jean Grey and Cyclops.
(Image credit: PlayStation)
According to a breakdown on the PlayStation Blog, this mission replay screen appears in Logan's Nightmare Cabin, which tracks with my hands-on time in Marvel's Wolverine. While wandering through levels, you'll stumble upon unreal doors that lead into a nightmare version of Logan's home, where you can take on various challenges. I didn't see this level select screen in my preview time, but it looks like the cabin will also be how you select missions to replay.
There are plenty of other low-key references to specific moments in Wolverine history, including numerous suits to unlock ranging from the classic brown-and-yellow to the nearly indecent Weapon X look. But I never would've expected such a goofy reference to creep into such a prominent part of Marvel's Wolverine, even though I love it all the same.
It's been nearly four years since Electronic Arts announced a partnership with Marvel to develop a new Iron Man game, and the studio behind it — EA Motive — haven't said much about the project. In the absence of official information, newly leaked gameplay of EA's Iron Man emerged this week, showing off an all-new action-packed adventure for Tony Stark that looks incredibly promising.
"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" kept a key character a secret until launch, now "Man of Tomorrow" is doing the same thing with Adria Arjona, surely Wonder Woman.
We haven't gotten official word from Rockstar yet on GTA 6's frame rate, but if you're holding out for a 60fps mode, the prognosis is not looking good. A new tech analysis suggests that it would be uniquely challenging for even high-end PCs to run GTA 6 at 60fps – never mind current-gen consoles.
That's according to Digital Foundry, which has gone over the footage from GTA 6 extended look with its usual fine-tooth comb. They found that the game appears to be running at a native 1440p on base PS5, with a simple upscale to 4K. That's a damned impressive resolution target given GTA 6's visual fidelity, and, given the base console's limitations, it's downright astounding that the game manages to hold 30fps as well as it does.
It's impossible to do a full frame rate analysis given the limitations of Rockstar's upload of the extended look video, DF says, but the outlet has found that the footage indicates "a relatively stable and well-paced 30fps output, with only very occasional single frame drops."
The consistency of that frame rate output indicates that "Rockstar has clearly spent immense effort balancing CPU and GPU workloads to fully saturate the hardware. That makes a 60fps version extremely unlikely on console hardware." PS5 Pro could, in theory, throw more GPU power at the problem, but that's unlikely to improve performance by much when the game is so heavily focused on a densely detailed open world and vast crowd tech – two things that normally require more CPU power.
We know that GTA 6 will feature some enhancements on PS5 Pro, but Rockstar reportedly hasn't settled on whether any sort of performance mode will ever be introduced. High-end PC hardware has, of course, already well outclassed Sony's monster machine, and it sounds like even the theoretical PC port of GTA 6 would struggle to reach 60fps on all but the latest and greatest CPUs.
"The CPU demands of a world this complex – tuned around console Zen 2 cores at 30fps – could make hitting 60fps genuinely challenging in a way we don't often see," Digital Foundry says, "and will likely require a high-end CPU like a recent Ryzen X3D to avoid bottlenecks."
A stable 30fps would still be the best performance we've seen out of a mainline GTA game in decades, as GTA 4 and 5 both had consistent, severe frame rate dips when they originally launched on Xbox 360 and PS3. Standards have admittedly changed over the past decade, but I doubt a 30fps cap is going to dissuade too many GTA fans from picking up the long-awaited blockbuster.
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