New Last Of Us PC Mod Turns Game Into Intense FPS

The Last of Us Part 1 is a brutal game that features a lot of murder and gore. But because the game is played from a third-person perspective, there is a bit of distance between players and its intense action. But that distance disappears when the game is modded into an action-packed first-person shooter.

This Modern Warfare 3 Gameplay Feature Spices Up A Weak Campaign

In March, Naughty Dog released the remastered PS5 version of the original Last of Us on PC. Initially, this version of the popular post-apocalyptic zombie survival game was a mess, filled with bugs and other problems. But since then, the developers have apologized for the lousy port and improved it. And now, as the Last of Us Part 1 on PC gets more stable, people are beginning to mod the game.

As first spotted by Comicbook.com, YouTuber and modder Voyagers Revenge is working on a first-person mod for Last of Us on PC. The mod is intended to make the game not only play like a first-person shooter, but also make the combat more intense and violent. You can see the mod in action in a recently uploaded eight-minute gameplay video.

The Last of Us in First Person Mode – Brutal Combat & New Aggressive Gameplay [PC Mods 4K 60FPS HDR]

In the video, the creator shows off how the combat from the Last of Us Part 1 translates to a FPS-like perspective. At one point we see Joel holding off waves of infected enemies with a handgun and rifle, and it almost plays out like something from Dying Light or Far Cry. It’s surprising that, even in this unfinished state, the mod looks extremely playable and professional. If you told me this was some new VR mode being added to the game by Naughty Dog themselves that would work with PSVR2 headsets, I’d probably believe you.

According to Voyagers Revenge’s videos, the mod, which they’ve been working on for a few months already, is being developed using tools created by other modders Flawless Widescreen, JediJosh920, and TheMagicalBlob.

Now the bad news: Voyagers Revenge doesn’t have a release date for this FPS mod. In the comments under the new gameplay video, they explain that this version of the mod is “unstable” and was built on an “older build of the game” that is prone to crashing. However, the creator does suggest that some version of the mod might be released publicly in the future, telling viewers to “stay tuned” and adding that “the mod community for [Last of Us] is going to wake up.”

…
by pbnbigesdi Posted on

Max Payne 3 Mod Finally Restores His Original Face

Sam Lake as Max Payne, in Max Payne 3, stares at himself in the mirror, courtesy of modder AlexSavvy.

Image: AlexSavvy

If you were feeling nostalgic for old-school Max Payne, the perpetually grimacing star of Remedy’s iconic third-person shooter of the same name, take heart. There’s now a mod for Max Payne 3 that brings back the character’s unforgettable OG face—based on Remedy Creative Director Sam Lake—squint and all.

How Alan Wake 2 Builds Upon The ‘Remedy-Verse’

For the uninitiated, Max Payne is a 2001 third-person shooter developed by Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Alan Wake, Control, and Quantum Break. The game featured the likeness of Sam Lake, a Remedy staff member who became known for lending his very structured face to the game’s protagonist. But Lake’s time as Payne’s face soon ended, as both Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne and Rockstar Studios’ Max Payne 3 changed course, with the former NYPD detective being modeled after actors Timothy Gibbs and then James McCaffrey in those sequels. However, modder AlexSavvy has now released a Sam Lake mod on Nexus Mods that puts Lake’s memorable mug back into Max Payne 3.

AlexSavvy

The mod “brings back the original look of Max Payne from the first game” so you can basically play as Sam Lake’s Max Payne in Max Payne 3. That game was pretty graphically sophisticated in its time, so making this mod required AlexSavvy to alter the fitting of every single costume to match Sam Lake’s body, and also model all the different hairstyles Payne sports throughout the game’s narrative.

The modder sought to fully preserve all existing facial expressions and wounds, and also brought back Payne’s Hawaiian shirt and leather jacket combo from the first game. In total, the mod replaces some 98 in-game models and 66 textures to reconstruct Sam Lake’s likeness. As ever, even a seemingly simple mod can require a ton of work.

If early feedback is anything to go by, AlexSavvy nailed it. Certain Max Payne fans have always had a bone to pick with the character’s changed appearance in Max Payne 3, and while it may have taken over a decade, now they can finally enjoy the game as the Max Payne they know and love, who happens to look a lot like Sam Lake.

Lake, incidentally, will also be appearing in Remedy’s upcoming Alan Wake 2, in which he’ll provide his likeness for the FBI agent Alex Casey.

…
by pbnbigesdi Posted on

Street Fighter 6 Tourney Accidentally Flashes Chun-Li Nude Mod

Street Fighter's Chun-Li stares with a disappointed look on her face.

Screenshot: Group TAC / Kotaku

A recent Street Fighter 6 European tournament saw quite the blunder as the event’s host, who was streaming the competition from their PC, accidentally left a nude mod for Chun-Li on during a match.

Hopefully Street Fighter 6’s New Open-World Won’t Mean Capcom Skimps On The Fighting

Things were off to a normal start during a July 31 tourney hosted by the Twitch channel Corner2Corner, as players pulled up to the weekly competition series.

Unfortunately, in the seventh of 96 matches for the day, things went awry. Between competitors Lensta’s Kimberly and Packz’s Chun-Li, the fight kicked off with the latter in the complete nude. Even the commentators couldn’t figure out how to address what one called the “interesting Chun-Li costume” as they nervously chuckled. According to a tweet from self-proclaimed “drama YouTuber” Nicholas DeOrio, the tournament host forgot to turn their naked mod off. In the end, the players exited the match, the organizers restarted the game to remove the mod, and everyone resumed the tournament. Packz was taken out by Lensta, who was, in turn, defeated in the second round. Packz, for his part, continued showing off his skills in the losers’ bracket before getting eliminated in the fourth round. Lensta was summarily eliminated in the losers’ bracket’s fourth round as well, with Guile player and Kick streamer imstilldadaddy winning the tournament.

Corner2Corner, the event’s organizers, commented the situation on August 1 saying, the nude mod was “accidentally left on for a few seconds,” calling it a mistake that will never happen again.

“Corner2Corner wish to address a recent mistake made on stream in which a graphical mod was accidentally left on for a few seconds in our recent tournament,” the group tweeted. “Some news stories have incorrectly blamed one of the players—this is NOT the case, it was our hosts PC streaming the match and his responsibility.”

The group also asked folks not to blame the players who competed in the tournament.

“Any negativity towards any players as a result of this genuine mistake is unacceptable and that is why we are making this statement,” Corner2Corner tweeted. “The mod is now removed—nothing like this will ever happen again.”

Kotaku reached out to Corner2Corner and Packz for comment.

 

…
by pbnbigesdi Posted on

Grand Theft Auto 5 AI NPC Mod Nuked From The Internet

In case you thought Rockstar Games’ acquisition of Grand Theft Auto V creator group Cfx.re meant a brave new era for open modding in the hit open-world game, don’t worry, publisher Take-Two is still going after fan projects it doesn’t like. Case in point is its recent sacking of a mod called Sentient Streets, which used AI technology to generate NPC conversation dialogue on the fly. Take-Two had the mod scoured from both YouTube and NexusMods, leaving its creator confused and discouraged.

How Alan Wake 2 Builds Upon The ‘Remedy-Verse’

The Sentient Streets mod, which was previously covered by a number of sites like IGN and Eurogamer, had a story that revolved around an AI-worshiping death cult and NPCs whose dialogue was randomly generated by a tool called the Inworld Character Engine. YouTube user Bloc, who created the GTA V mod, said a video showing it off had over 100,000 views before it was removed, while the mod itself had apparently been downloaded over 3,000 times before NexusMods, where it was hosted, took it down.

“Perhaps this occurred automatically, but the evidence suggests a deliberate manual DMCA takedown request from them,” Bloc wrote in a post on YouTube. “I also didn’t get any response back [from Take-Two]. It looks like they are just attacking [the] mod from all fronts.”

Rockstar’s parent company has a long history of going after fan projects, mods, and other unsanctioned creations, from sending DMCA takedowns to filing lawsuits and even reportedly sending private investigators to players’ houses. At the same time, vast role-play communities and the third-party mods and servers that sustain them are a massive part of GTA V’s enduring significance and popularity.

It was both surprising but understandable then when Rockstar recently announced it would formerly partner with Cfx.re, the development team behind the FiveM and RedM mod communities for GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2, respectively. “As a way to further support those efforts, we recently expanded our policy on mods to officially include those made by the roleplay creative community,” the studio wrote in its announcement.

It’s not clear why Take-Two appears to have singled out Bloc’s mod for termination, but it could have something to do with its integration of the third-party Inworld Character Engine, made by Inworld AI, and voices by ElevenLabs. The latter ompany, which has a $100 million valuation, creates AI-generated voices through a combination of random sampling and contracted performances, it told IGN. It’s not hard to see that raising all kinds of potential red flags that don’t apply to standard mods that simply add or change in-game assets and gameplay mechanics.

Take-Two and Bloc did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Knowing that large corporations can issue strikes based on arbitrary reasons, which can cause your work to go in vain in moments, is also discouraging to say the least,” Bloc wrote in their post.

Correction 8/17/2023 9:00 p.m. ET: Inworld Character Engine was made by Inworld AI not ElevenLabs.

…
by pbnbigesdi Posted on

Starfield’s Most Popular Mod Sparks Paywall Controversy

Starfield’s upscaling controversy on PC continues. The person responsible for the open-world sci-fi RPG’s most popular mod offering DLSS2 support has now created one for DLSS3 as well. It’s locked behind a Patreon paywall though, angering some in the mod community and leading a few to circumvent the project’s DRM and pirate it for free instead.

Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

If all that sounds like a confusing mess, that’s because it is. To briefly recap: Bethesda Game Studios and AMD announced an exclusive partnership for Starfield. This meant it would only support AMD’s upscaling technology for better resolution and framerate performance, FSR2, rather than competing tools like Nvidia’s DLSS2 and Intel’s XeSS. AMD claimed nothing was stopping Bethesda from supporting the rival upscaling technologies. Nevertheless, Starfield launched without options to turn them on in the settings menu.

Enter modder PureDark and “Starfield Upscaler,” which is currently the most popular mod for Starfield on NexusMods and replaces FSR2 support with DLSS and XeSS. It’s free and has been downloaded by over 150,000 players so far, improving their experience with the game thanks to PureDark’s simple workarounds. “Yep, DLSS2 was too easy, Bethesda exported all the FSR2 functions,” they wrote. “It’s like I can just reuse 95% of the code from Elden Ring or Jedi Survivor.”

That would have been the end of the story, except that PureDark proceeded to release a test build of a second mod on September 2 that supports DLSS3, the latest version of the tool for improved framerates released by Nvidia in September 2022 (via The Verge). Instead of being free, that mod was locked behind PureDark’s paywall, reigniting an age-old debate about the ethics of profiting off mods vs. giving them away. The kicker was that PureDark even added DRM to the mod in the form of an authenticator to prevent players from accessing the tool without a one-time, active $5 Patreon subscription.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some in the PC gaming community responded by “cracking” the mod just like they would a new release in order to pirate it. “STARFIELD DLSS 3 FG Mod by PureDark Has Been CRACKED Already,” tweeted the account PC_Focus on September 3 (via IGN). “Paid mods get what deserved [sic] for having DRM implemented.”

Others in the modding community, meanwhile, have attempted to release free mods that support DLSS3. One of them is by LukeFZ564. Uploaded to NexusMods, users initially reported a number of bugs and crashes with it, but some of those seem to be resolved. The latest comments are all thanking LukeFZ564 for the free alternative to paid mods.

Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

…

by pbnbigesdi Posted on

Starfield’s Official Mod Tools Are Coming In 2024

Although thousands of fan-made Starfield mods are already available—such as an early inventory screen overhaul, and Hello Kitty gun skins—official supported modding tools aren’t planned to hit Bethesda Game Studios’ open-space RPG until next year, game director Todd Howard said in an interview.

The Top 10 Most-Played Games On Steam Deck: October 2023 Edition

Read More: Starfield Isn’t The Future Of Video Games, And That’s Okay
Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

Speaking to the Japanese publication Famitsu (and machine-translated by PCGamesN), Howard said mods are important to the studio. As such, Bethesda is working hard to ensure mod support functions without a hitch.

“When the mods are ready, you will be able to do almost anything as we have done in the past, and the mods will be supported next year, but we will do it in a big way because we love it too,” Howard said to questions about mods.

This release cadence mirrors what Bethesda Game Studios has done with its previous games, most notably Fallout 4, which saw official mod support come to the open-world post-apocalyptic shooter a year after it launched. Howard also confirmed that official mod support would hit Starfield in due time during a November 2021 Reddit AMA. So, the studio is making good on its promises.

“Our plan [is] have full mod support like our previous games,” Howard said in response to mod inquiries. “Our modding community has been with us for 20 years. We love what they do and hope to see more make a career out of it.”

Kotaku reached out to Bethesda for comment.

Read More: Todd Howard Tells Starfield Players To Upgrade Their PCs
Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

Starfield has been a massive success for Bethesda Game Studios and Microsoft since it officially launched on September 6 for PC and Xbox consoles. The game’s concurrent player count on Steam peaked at over 330K, which is well above The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s 287K concurrent player record, and overall the game has reportedly reached some six million players. While these are impressive figures, it’s worth noting that Starfield is available for “free” via Xbox Game Pass, so the numbers may not tell the whole story. Still, Starfield is doing very well thus far.

 

…

by pbnbigesdi Posted on

Nexus Mods Is Happy To Remove Bigoted Starfield ‘Pronoun’ Mod

Nexus Mods, one of the largest online repositories of fan-made video game modifications, recently deleted a Starfield mod that removed the game’s built-in option to choose a pronoun for your created character. As you might expect, this removal angered a very toxic portion of players who yelled at Nexus Mods over its choice and threatened to stop using the massive site. But Nexus Mods is sticking with its decision and has a message to angry bigots: We aren’t sad to see you leave.

The Top 10 Most-Played Games On Steam Deck: October 2023 Edition

Starfield, one of the biggest games of 2023, is also a Bethesda RPG. That means it’s a large open-world game filled with quests and places to explore, but it also has some annoying bugs and frustrating design choices. And as usual, PC-based modders have come to the rescue to help tweak and improve the game. While many of these mods are useful and/or fun, some aren’t as positive, like a mod that removes the ability to choose a pronoun, a small feature in the game that became a viral talking point among toxic losers upset about Starfield being “woke.” However, if you try to download that mod from Nexus Mods today, you won’t find it, because the people running the site didn’t want it around.

In a report from 404Media published Friday, Nexus Mods told the outlet that while it doesn’t see itself as the “police of what people can and cannot mod into (or out of) their games” it does decide which content it wants to host or not host. And Nexus Mods said hosting this pronoun-removal mod was “not for us.”

“It is certainly within our rights not to host content on our platform,” Nexus Mods told 404Media. It also said the mod’s removal wasn’t a “political statement” or the site picking sides in the ongoing culture war. Instead, it said it simply believes in “diversity and inclusion,” adding that the “removal of diversity, while appealing to many, does not promote a positive modding community.”

Nexus Mods isn’t phased by toxic comments

If you’ve been on the internet at all in the last few years, you know what happened next. Lots of angry chuds hopped into forums and social media threads to yell about how this was evil censorship and infringing on their rights. For its part, Nexus Mods doesn’t care about the reaction.

“A reinforcement that this has been the best course of action has been some of the hatred, vitriol, and threats of violence coming from a very, very small minority of the community,” Nexus Mods said. “Frankly, we are not sad to see them go.”

This isn’t the first time the popular modding site has upset toxic assholes. In 2022, Nexus took similar action against a mod for Spider-Man Remastered that removed Pride flags from the game’s New York City. That mod would later be re-uploaded to the Internet Archive; a good reminder to those claiming these mods are no longer accessible, they are, you just can’t get them from one specific site anymore.

At the time, Nexus Mods had this to say in a blog post explaining why it had deleted the Spider-Man mod from its site: “We are for inclusivity, we are for diversity. If we think someone is uploading a mod on our site with the intent to deliberately be against inclusivity and/or diversity then we will take action against it.”

Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

.

…
by pbnbigesdi Posted on

Creator Of Massively Popular Starfield DLSS Mod Defends Paywall

“Starfield Upscaler” is the second-most popular mod for Bethesda’s open-world RPG, but its creator sparked controversy earlier this month because the best version of it was locked behind a $5 Patreon subscription paywall. In a new interview with IGN he defends the practice, and threatens users who try to pirate his work with “hidden mines” that will break the mod.

Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

Starfield released without support for Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology that lets players get better framerate performance on PC without sacrificing much image quality. There was a big backlash, and Bethesda has since promised to add official support in an upcoming patch. In the meantime, however, players have flocked to a mod for the feature by NexusMods creator PureDark.

Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

He released a free version that supported DLSS 2, but access to DLSS 3 support, the newest version, was exclusive to his personal Patreon. Drama ensued and pirates who normally focus on “cracking” the DRM protecting games like Starfield instead took a moment to “crack” the “Starfield Upscaler” mod itself.

“It’s funny that people think this is new, I’ve been providing it as a service for more than 10 months, way before Starfield,” PureDark told IGN. He makes DLSS support mods for all sorts of games, amassing what he calls a small Game Pass-like library of mods worth paying for. “I’ve been making new mods and keeping mods updated for months for my subscribers, is $5 too much for such a service?”

Lots of people don’t agree, and an ethos of “free work, free mods” permeates the creator space around them. More than one company, including Bethesda, has gotten in trouble with fans in the past for going about trying to monetize the community in ways many feel goes against the spirit of it. Some even responded to PureDark’s paywall by making free alternatives of their own, like modder LukeFZ.

Those who still insist on trying to get PureDark’s DLSS 3 mod for Starfield for free better watch out. “From now on I will place hidden mines in all my mods to make it harder for these people,” he told IGN. “The cracked mods will sometimes work, sometimes fail, sometimes work but [be] very wonky, sometimes even crash and they won’t even know if it’s a bug or just them using the cracked version, and they will never have the support I’ve been always providing to my subscribers.”

Update 9/28/2023 2:10 p.m. ET: PureDark’s feelings have apparently changed. In a new interview with Wccftech, the modder says his original comments were made in anger a week ago and he’s since calmed down.

“The interview with IGN was conducted more than a week ago, and it was what I said back when I was angry at haters and those who cracked my Starfield mod,” he now says. “I did think about doing that at some point, but then I stopped doing it. It’s been a long time, and I’ve calmed my mind.”

He added that actually booby-trapping the mod would be a lot of work and not worth the effort. “It’s really not worth it to waste my time fighting or getting back to those people,” PureDark said. “I might as well focus on making new mods and updates.”

                   

…
by pbnbigesdi Posted on

New Doom Mod Is Basically A Badass Indiana Jones Game

Doom is still a very good first-person shooter, even if it’s nearly 30 years old. But that first, world-changing chapter did lack something that its predecessor, Wolfenstein 3D, had plenty of—Nazi killin’. Thankfully a new total conversion mod for Doom, called Venturous, has fixed this and in the process created a whole Indiana Jones-inspired game.

Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty DLC Probably Won’t Change V’s Fate

Released all the way back in 1993, the original Doom from id Software was a big step forward for video game technology and also helped popularize the first-person shooter genre. Even today, three decades later, people are still playing and modding Doom and all of its sequels. So it’s not shocking that in 2023 someone has spent a lot of time on a brand-new total conversion mod for the original Doom that turns the game into a Nazi killin’ adventure that sees you spanning the globe as you look for the lost city of Atlantis.

Venturous, developed by PixelFox, came out earlier this month but in the last week has become more popular as folks have discovered this rad adventure-themed GZDoom mod. I just came across it today and ended up getting distracted for about an hour playing it instead of doing my job and writing about it.

Pagb666 / id Software

What immediately stood out to me about Venturous is how heavy guns feel. Even the starting pistol is no peashooter and can take down rooms of Nazis in a few seconds. I also like how the mod plays around with darkness, especially in the first level. You have to use a torch to see in some areas. And you can only hold the torch while using the pistol, which has limited ammo, forcing you to sometimes fight in the dark if you run out of handgun bullets. However, you can also toss the torch to light up areas and make combat easier in these dark hallways. Or you can even chuck the flaming torch at enemies and set them on fire.

The mod has seven maps split across three areas with each map featuring new weapons and enemies. I especially love the MP40 SMG as it sounds menacing and does a lot of damage very quickly. The new lever action shotgun is also just as good and dangerous as any shotgun found in official id Software shooters.

Developer PixelFox—who had only created two maps before this massive project—explained that they made this mod because they wanted to play an “Indiana Jones-style adventure” in a retro shooter engine. So after a year of learning how to create something like a total conversion mod pack, PixelFox has finished Venturous.

You can download and check out Venturous yourself for free. Just a heads up before you hop in: You’ll need to download and install GZDoom and get that all set up first, and this particular total conversion requires the data file from the original Doom, not Doom II. But once you have that sorted, you’ll be able to enjoy this mod and three decades’ worth of other cool stuff, too.

.

…
by pbnbigesdi Posted on
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Looks Blog by Crimson Themes.