The latest DF Direct Weekly lands, with the team spending a great deal of time discussing Gotham Knights and the mooted return of 30 frames per second gaming for the latest generation of consoles – something I’ll be discussing in a bit more length in an upcoming Eurogamer article. There are some interesting takeaways though: 30fps for a cross-gen title can be what you might call a fallback position if there are technical issues (which a look at the PC version of Gotham Knights reveals is likely the case) while the graphical brilliant of A Plague Tale: Requiem demonstrates that there’s always a limit to the capabilities of a gaming box with limited resources at its disposal. Ultimately, it’s down to the game developer to choose what is right for their title – but more than that, they will be entirely aware of the popularity of 60fps performance modes. It stands to reason that if there’s not that expected functionality, there are likely good reasons why.
There’s much more on the docket for discussion in this week’s Direct. There is a dual helping of exciting survival horror in the offing, with reveals for Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake, plus a remarkable array of footage unleashed for Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 – two releases with very different takes on revitalising PS2/GameCube era classics. Capcom’s RE Engine delivers exactly what I was expecting from its latest remake, but what I wasn’t expecting was the sheer intensity of the gameplay footage. It’s looking astonishing. Meanwhile, Silent Hill 2 teases us in all of the right ways and while controversy surrounds some of the changes, at least we got to see something that looks like it’s running in real-time (complete with minor artefacts we’d associate with UE5, a mark of authenticity if you will). Heavy blunt force trauma instruments being dragged along the ground by shambling zombies? The trope is back with a vengeance and we’re here for it in both cases.
Beyond that, we spend some time discussing the latest Final Fantasy 16 trailer that arrived last week, while Alex talks about the trials and tribulations of reviewing Uncharted: The Legacy Collection on PC. It’s another example of a PC title sent out to reviewers with some big issues – problems that were ultimately resolved by the day one patch, which essentially required us to re-do around 50 percent of the video you saw last week. In the Direct, John came up with the brilliant idea of actually sharing the first version of the Uncharted review as bonus material on the DF Supporter Program – and after spending some time unearthing a copy of what we thought had been entirely deleted content, we did indeed share it with DF backers last Friday.
