During today’s State of Unreal presentation at the annual Game Developers Conference, Epic Games spent some time looking forward to the era of photorealistic, real-time graphics for its Unreal Engine. Three demos showed off how Unreal Engine is powering real-time ray tracing for realistic lighting and reflections, and “digital humans” that push the boundaries of the uncanny valley. Here are three peeks at the future of real-time graphics running in Unreal Engine. A short movie titled “Reflection

Just days after Studio Wildcard announced that it’s bringing prehistoric survival game Ark: Survival Evolved to mobile devices comes new of another port: Ark is bound for Nintendo Switch too. Studio Wildcard announced the Switch port, which is being co-developed with Abstraction Games, at today’s State of Unreal presentation at the annual Game Developers Conference. Ark: Survival Evolved will come to Switch sometime during fall 2018. The developer said the Switch version of Ark: Survival Evolved

Mosaic, the third game from Norwegian developers Krillbite Studio, at first glance reminds of games like Inside, or similar low-poly, muted-tone puzzle-platformers. Mosaic is the studio’s third title, after 2014’s Among The Sleep, and Vien told me that production on Mosaic began about three years ago, shortly after the release of the previous game. Playing the game while in San Francisco, where ads for Lyft are as ubiquitous as shuttered storefronts, the satirical bent of Mosaic feels spot-on. M

“The Death of the Mighty Thor” is name of the story currently being told in the pages of Marvel Comics’ The Mighty Thor, a comic about the adventures of Jane Foster, the god of thunder. In this month’s The Mighty Thor #705, it seems to have delivered on its promise to show us the death of Thor. [Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Mighty Thor #705.] Eventually, in “The Death of the Mighty Thor,” Jane confronts the fact that if she ever becomes Thor again, when she transforms back she wi

A day after the launch of Sea of Thieves, an ambitious multiplayer pirate adventure game for Windows PC and Xbox One, the developers at Rare have issued a candid video update regarding the game’s persistent technical issues. Rare studio head Craig Duncan and executive producer Joe Neate took time away from what they describe as round-the-clock triage of those issues to put together the video update above. The issue is the “join rate,” or the number of players trying to get into the game world at

A day after the launch of Sea of Thieves, an ambitious multiplayer pirate adventure game for Windows PC and Xbox One, the developers at Rare have issued a candid video update regarding the game’s persistent technical issues. Rare studio head Craig Duncan and executive producer Joe Neate took time away from what they describe as round-the-clock triage of those issues to put together the video update above. The issue is the “join rate,” or the number of players trying to get into the game world at

So why not start off your spring with a virtual vacation to Italy’s Amalfi Coast in Hitman? In its main mission, “World of Tomorrow,” 47 must eliminate two targets as well as a lethal virus. IO released Hitman Spring Pack today on PlayStation 4, Windows PC (via Steam, where the content isn’t yet available) and Xbox One. In addition to “World of Tomorrow,” Hitman Spring Pack includes Hitman’s prequel at an ICA facility — which comes with two story missions — plus everything else in the Sapienza e

So why not start off your spring with a virtual vacation to Italy’s Amalfi Coast in Hitman? In its main mission, “World of Tomorrow,” 47 must eliminate two targets as well as a lethal virus. IO released Hitman Spring Pack today on PlayStation 4, Windows PC (via Steam, where the content isn’t yet available) and Xbox One. In addition to “World of Tomorrow,” Hitman Spring Pack includes Hitman’s prequel at an ICA facility — which comes with two story missions — plus everything else in the Sapienza e

The makers of a biopic about the life and career of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell are going to fund it with a cryptocurrency. Bushnell Tokens, as the filmmakers are calling this, are actually a kind of crypto-security more than they are something like Bitcoin. Officially speaking, it’s an an “ERC-20 security token,” which sounds like more of a security and less of a currency. The film project appears to have no formal connection to the present-day Atari company. But it also comes at a time when t

The makers of a biopic about the life and career of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell are going to fund it with a cryptocurrency. Bushnell Tokens, as the filmmakers are calling this, are actually a kind of crypto-security more than they are something like Bitcoin. Officially speaking, it’s an an “ERC-20 security token,” which sounds like more of a security and less of a currency. The film project appears to have no formal connection to the present-day Atari company. But it also comes at a time when t

The Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons have a lot of cool features, but exceptional comfort isn’t one of them. If you’re playing Switch games for an extended length of time you’ve probably looked into the Switch Pro Controller, but its $70 price tag makes it one of the most expensive gamepads on the market. The Horipad Wired Controller is another (more budget-friendly) option, with a detachable D-pad that’s great for fighting games. Polygon Deals is a biweekly roundup of the best deals on the internet, cu

Appearing in a cozy bathrobe and his hair wrapped up in a towel — perhaps after enjoying a nice spa day — actor Henry Cavill announced to the world today that he has shaved his mustache. The actor admitted that there might be some confusion about it — seeing as how his mustache was so convincingly digitally removed for reshoots on Warner Bros.’ Justice League last year. OK, so the digital removal wasn’t convincing at all, and in fact it kind of became a thing. Cavill caps off his Instagram video

Just days after Studio Wildcard announced that it’s bringing prehistoric survival game Ark: Survival Evolved to mobile devices comes new of another port: Ark is bound for Nintendo Switch too. Studio Wildcard announced the Switch port, which is being co-developed with Abstraction Games, at today’s State of Unreal presentation at the annual Game Developers Conference. Ark: Survival Evolved will come to Switch sometime during fall 2018. The developer said the Switch version of Ark: Survival Evolved

Let’s get this out of the way: If you didn’t like Pacific Rim, you’re not going to like Pacific Rim Uprising. But if you can buy into Pacific Rim, you can buy into Pacific Rim Uprising. And if you can buy into Pacific Rim Uprising despite its flaws, you’ll find it to be a fun, if not exactly filling, film. Uprising is still a candy-colored world, but somewhat muted; dusty where Pacific Rim was drippy, rusty where Pacific Rim was neon. If you haven’t already bought into it, Pacific Rim Uprising m

And it’s time someone with real-world experience with both firearms and video games pushed back against these narratives. I eventually got better through firearms training, not video games. In fact, 80 percent of mass shooters show no interest in violent video games. Video games are not turning our children or troubled men into rogue Special Forces operators. We have a much, much bigger problem than shooty-bang video games, and we need to address it.

But when you consider Nintendo’s history, the company might be getting back to its roots. These cards were originally hand painted on mulberry tree bark, but Nintendo eventually mass-produced them in order to keep up with demand. This extending arm toy made by a bored machinist became Nintendo’s first toy: the Ultra Hand. Mario, and most of Nintendo’s video game success, came more than 90 years after Nintendo’s founding. Nintendo’s success started with tree bark.

But when you consider Nintendo’s history, the company might be getting back to its roots. These cards were originally hand painted on mulberry tree bark, but Nintendo eventually mass-produced them in order to keep up with demand. This extending arm toy made by a bored machinist became Nintendo’s first toy: the Ultra Hand. Mario, and most of Nintendo’s video game success, came more than 90 years after Nintendo’s founding. Nintendo’s success started with tree bark.

In the world of game development, Hisashi Koinuma is a bit of an anomaly. Even after five years as the president of Koei Tecmo, Koinuma still finds himself with “producer” credits on many of its games. To someone used to working in the trenches of a game’s development, becoming an executive would typically mean less time to help in the construction of games, or none at all. Since becoming president of Koei Tecmo, Koinuma’s most frequent development role has been producer, including credits on Hy

Quirky stick figure RPG West of Loathing is coming to the Nintendo Switch. As revealed on Nintendo’s Nindies Showcase live stream, the port will be a console exclusive. One of our favorites games from last year, developer Asymmetric’s West of Loathing takes the RPG template created by the original Fallout games — including weird random encounters with weird, very memorable characters — and ups the humor in a big way. As we said in our review, the game “takes a stock-standard genre setup and then

It’s difficult to talk about League of Legends without bringing up the game’s rampant toxicity problem afflicting players. Kimberly Voll, a senior technical designer at Riot who works on trying to curb disruptive player behavior, told Polygon that it’s an ongoing conversation. Streamers, like the infamous Tyler1, who received a permanent ban for more than 600 days before Riot Games lifted it, is one of the most notorious examples. League of Legends has more than 100 million players; that’s the s