Here’s a rundown of what the small box does and doesn’t do Sony has kept mum on the capabilities of PlayStation VR’s processing unit to this point, but the company finally provided some details on the box during a presentation today at the 2016 Game Developers Conference.
“It is not extra GPU power CPU power," said Chris Norden, senior staff engineer at Sony. "It is certainly not a PlayStation 4 expansion unit or upgrade."
Norden added, "Actually, it’s not really accessible to the developer in any way," noting that "the PlayStation 4 is perfectly capable of 120 Hz."

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The making of PlayStation VR

Sony’s been so secretive about the box, which is officially called the "processor unit," that we weren’t even allowed to take photos of it as recently as December. The company provided the dimensions of the box yesterday, following the announcement of the PlayStation VR price and release window: The processor unit is about the size of four CD jewel cases stacked together.
So what does the processor unit do? A slide in Norden’s presentation explained that the box handles processing of object-based 3D audio, and displays the "social screen," which is Sony’s term for the second screen that you may use with PlayStation VR. (The box allows the PS4 to simultaneously output an image to the headset and, say, a television.) The processor unit unwarps the headset image so it can be displayed on a normal screen, and that process drops the resolution somewhat for the social screen.
The processor unit can use the social screen in both mirroring mode and in a separate mode, according to Norden. And the box also handles the display of the PS4 interface when the PlayStation VR headset is being used in cinematic mode.
We’ll have more from Norden’s talk soon.
Developing …

Will be released as a book first Director Michael Mann is bringing a group of writers together to write a prequel novel and film adaptation to his 1995 movie, Heat.
According to Deadline, Mann is launching a book publishing company with the goal to adapt each title that comes through for either film or television. The director will reportedly scour his own archive of films to look for potential ideas, but his highest priority remains bringing the Heat prequel to fruition.
Starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, Heat followed a gang of bank robbers trying to evade police upon realizing they accidentally left a clue at the location of their most recent heist. The prequel will reportedly focus on the “formative" years of each major character.
Mann is currently working on securing writers for both fiction and non-fiction projects. Once his writers are onboard, work can start on the prequel but there’s no estimated release date at this time.

We just wanted to talk to camels. Moon Hunters is one of those games that feels incredibly vast, while also very small.
It’s a point-and-click RPG from Kitfox Games, where you play a legendary hero trying to figure out what happened to the moon. You see, the moon was supposed to rise for your village’s First Moon Feast but instead she was a no-show. As a respected hero, you’re sent out to find her.
That basic premise is the same with every playthrough, as is the villain: sun cult leader Mardokh. But in between, any number of things can happen. The procedurally generated encounters and locations of Moon Hunters hint at a huge world full of opportunities.
In practice, it can be a little frustrating. The gameplay is limited to three in-game days, which are marked by your camping after clearing an area. So while I often discovered really interesting opportunities (cave full of blood!) I wasn’t always able to pursue them. In every playthrough I was told that I could find someone who could teach me to talk to animals. I only broached that possibility in my fifth playthrough, but wasn’t able to pursue it fully before my three days were up and I had to fight Mardokh.
It reminded Griffin and me a little bit of The Yawhg, and a little bit of Road Not Taken. One thing you definitely can’t miss: the gorgeous art and music. I’m not the kind of person who goes wild for pixel art, but this game is an exception for me. Watch the video to see what I mean! It also showcases the game’s environments, fast-paced combat, and the camel that I still can’t talk to.
Moon Hunters is available on Steam for PC. You can play with up to four players, locally and online.

Step onto the desert planet yourself If you ever get a chance to check it out, your visit to a virtual reality Star Wars in its current form will be all too brief.
The Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine demo runs for maybe seven minutes in its entirety, and only a brief moment within that time is actual gameplay.
The demo opens with the familiar burst of music so familiar to anyone who has seen a Star Wars movie, and then comes the text crawl, marching off into the star-filled distance until it finally disappears.
Next you see Tatooine and then, finally, you’re there, standing by a landing pad next to a clutter of boxes and storage bins in an alien desert.
The Millennium Falcon swoops down, and after a bit of banter and a quick repair or two, R2-D2 hands over your lightsaber. The controls are precise, but smoothed out to prevent the jitter some might deliver with an unsteady hand. I was able to perform tight figure eights in the air with the tip of the lightsaber and tiny, nearly invisible circles with controlled wrist movement.
While the virtual weapon obviously lacks the heft of a physical object, I was surprised at how real it felt in the experience. It’s been a while, but I spent my high school and college years learning and teaching fencing. This weapon behaved like it should when it came to tip control.
It did feel ever so slightly behind the faster of my real-world wrist movements, but not enough to throw me out of the experience.
After a few seconds of adjusting, my place sort of under the Millennium Falcon was attacked by a swarm of stormtroopers, and Han Solo asked me, over an intercom, to protect R2.
I spent the next minute or so swatting red lasers out of the air, trying my best to both protect the droid and also angle the laser blasts back at the approaching troopers.
I found using the tip of the lightsaber was easier and more efficient than trying to, essentially, parry the blasts with the edge of the weapon.
It was fantastic fun, but over way too quickly for the buildup. I was also surprised to find that a few times I bumped the wall with my controller.
Later, the person demoing the game for me said that the typical virtual wall that pops up to warn a player that they’re about to hit something was turned off for the demo because the developers thought it took away from the experience.

Check out the video above to see the entire demo, and me awkwardly swatting my way through it.

They all have appropriately hellish names Doom will ship with nine multiplayer maps, publisher Bethesda Softworks announced today, and you can see all of them in action in a new trailer.
The trailer showcases four of the maps — Helix, Disposal, Chasm and Infernal — with lengthy fly-bys, and features brief glimpses of the five others.
Bethesda also offered some notes about what players will encounter on those maps. Some of the arenas include one-way or two-way teleporters, which will transport humans and demons but not weapon fire. Humans and demons can also use bounce pads to get to higher vantage points, and they’ll both have to avoid two types of instant-kill hazards: lava and pits of death.
Other things to keep an eye out for include explosive barrels and hazard canisters, the latter of which will leave behind harmful green slime when they blow up. Three other environmental dangers — fire, radioactive slime and energy/plasma — will only hurt humans, not demons.
Here’s the full list of Doom’s maps, complete with descriptions, straight from Bethesda:

Excavation: A modest-sized UAC mining outpost. Watch out for the rock grinder!
Infernal: A mid-sized Hell map with both interior and exterior elements. Lots of platforms and chasms, along with teleporters.
Chasm: This massive map takes you deep below the polar ice caps of Mars. A great place to play Freeze Tag.
Disposal: This smaller map is the main waste processing facility for the UAC research and residential complexes. Unsurprisingly, it’s full of radioactive slime.
Helix: This is where they experiment on demons and develop advanced weaponry. Which, naturally, makes it perfect for a quick round of Clan Arena.
Perdition: Disjointed and sadistic, this ancient arena is populated by the agonized moans of unfortunate souls who have suffered within its realm.
Sacrilegious: Set within a fracture of Hell, this map offers clear lines of sight. Move fast… or die faster.
Heatwave: An industrial UAC facility with glistening halls that will soon be slicked with human (and demon) blood.
Beneath: Before being beamed to Earth, the energies of Hell are harnessed in this symmetrical and cavernous location.

Doom is set for release May 13 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. Its closed multiplayer beta, which will be available on all three platforms, will run from March 31 through April 3.

Die over and over again in real life Game designer Eric Lang shared plans for “a simple but highly deep and interactive card game" based on Bloodborne — From Software’s brutally difficult, and hugely popular, 2015 PS4 exclusive — on Twitter today. Here’s his tweet, along with an image of the box:

For those who follow me and have gotten to know my silly codenames for games-in-progress, this is Project Dream. pic.twitter.com/fqoKqJwCQx
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

Lang is no stranger to tabletop adaptations of video games, having created XCOM The Board Game in 2014. Lang is also responsible for games in the Warhammer, Game of Thrones and even Star Wars universes — as evidenced by his impressive CV — so licensed adaptations are familiar ground.

Bloodborne is indeed licensed. It is a simple but highly deep and interactive card game. From @CMONGames. No minis! But sweet components.
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

The game will be based on Bloodborne’s procedurally generated (and therefore, in theory, infinitely replayable) Chalice Dungeons which our review of the game describes as:
… stuffed with treasures to find and unique bosses to fight. Players will see things in these sections of the game that they won’t see elsewhere — though the Chalice Dungeon bosses simply don’t compare in spectacle to Bloodborne’s other big bad enemies. Still, they’re fun to explore and if you manage to build a particularly interesting or challenging dungeon, you can share it with other players and explore it together.

Bloodborne is a card game based on the Chalice dungeon runs, where players compete to kill monsters and take their blood. But don’t die!
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

Bloodborne: risk management with a bit of groupthink, inventory management/upgrades and tactical play in an intense 30 minute card game.
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

My goal with Bloodborne was to channel the intensity and frustration of the video game into a contest between players. Lots of death.
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

That definitely sounds like Bloodborne. If tabletop card games are your thing — and From Software’s brand of video game most definitely isn’t — don’t despair! Lang admits his design expertise didn’t extend to cruising through the streets of Yharnam unscathed:

Yes, I played it on Playstation. And yes, I sucked horribly at it.
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

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I was aware that Salt and Sanctuary would be a 2D incarnation of the Souls games — think Castlevania, not Slashy Souls — but after playing a few hours of the final game on PlayStation 4, I was not prepared for how punishing an adaptation it really was. Sure, it’s got Souls-like mechanics, like resource loss upon death and hugely customizable characters. But what’s more impressive is how it has adapted the moments that the Souls games can deliver: Like, for instance, the delight of having a game trick you into running to your death through a field of spike traps.
You can watch Justin and I play through a bit of Salt and Sanctuary, including a genuinely upsetting boss fight, in the Overview video posted above.

Part puzzle game, part reflex challenge. Like many VR games, Headmaster starts with a simple concept. The game throws soccer balls at you, and you move your head to hit them back. It’s wrapped in a story where you visit a center for soccer players who need help, but it’s really all about the feeling of a soccer ball hitting you in the head.
There’s a nice sense of timing when the ball flies in, a satisfying suction cup sound effect when it hits you and a quick bounce when it flies away. And you don’t have to move your head to the point of discomfort — you can slowly lean in and still get a pretty accurate shot, as long as you approach it from the correct angle.
Similar to something like Portal, the game is primarily a series of challenges, with bits of story and humor snuck in around the edges. Your main goal is to aim the soccer balls at specific targets. The more difficult the targets are to hit, the more points you get for them. Then as you progress, the game throws in obstacles and twists on the concept, with an excitable employee named Carl mixed in.
“It’s not wacky,” says Frame Interactive CEO Ben Throop. “It’s more like dark humor. The guy that runs it, you never see him. … Let’s just call him the headmaster. … He’s kind of only half paying attention, because he’s got a lot of other stuff going on. He hired Carl to do stuff, and Carl gets a little bit excited to make the challenges for you.”

Carl is the center’s only employee, and isn’t allowed to talk to you, so he leaves notes behind to tell you what’s going on and add some flavor. The bulk of the game, though, lies in the challenges he creates.
In the demo version on display at GDC, this plays out initially in a realistic sense, but soon ramps up. In one challenge, you get a giant beach ball that knocks over multiple targets at once, making aiming easier. In another, you get soccer ball-shaped bombs, which you use to blow up wooden crates and clear a path. One stage puts a forklift carrying an outhouse in your way, making you aim around it to hit your targets. And in the final stage before the GDC demo fades to black, you see the outlines of a rock concert stage, hinting at something more elaborate.
The developers are also planning a multiplayer mode called the “group session” where players take turns wearing the headset and pass it around, competing for score. “It’s kind of like you’re all visiting a football improvement center together,” says Throop. “You’ve all been bad players and got sent there by your club to improve.”
Frame is planning Headmaster as a PlayStation VR launch title to ship in October, exclusive to Sony’s headset because Sony funded the game.

Shadow Complex is perhaps best known as the game that took “Metroidvania" from ghoulish portmanteau to actual genre. If you missed it the first time around (and when it was remastered for PC last year), it’s now available on Xbox One for $14.99.
Besides the obvious visual upgrades, Shadow Complex Remastered features new melee takedowns and challenges. The subset of players who don’t have access to Chair’s side-scrolling classic gets even smaller this May when the game comes to PlayStation 4 and Steam.

It’s a new way to create video games and other types of entertainment Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice developer Ninja Theory debuted a new trailer during the 2016 Game Developers Conference for the game formerly known as just Hellblade, and the two-minute video is about more than just the titular character.
Senua, the protagonist of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, is a Celtic warrior left traumatized after a Viking invasion. She develops psychosis as a result of the attack, and hears voices in her head; Hellblade seeks to explore mental health issues through the character.
Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory’s chief creative officer, presented the trailer during Epic Games’ “State of Unreal" talk at GDC 2016 today. In the middle of the trailer, a picture-in-picture window popped up to reveal that it wasn’t a trailer at all — Senua’s facial animations in the video were being generated from a live performance on stage by actress Melina Juergens, which was being captured in real time and streamed into Unreal Engine 4.
Ninja Theory and Epic Games worked with Cubic Motion, a facial animation and computer vision firm that has contributed technology to games like The Order: 1886, Until Dawn and Ryse: Son of Rome, on the demo. The facial rig was built by a company called 3Lateral and "optimized for real-time performance," said Cubic Motion in a press release.
"The robustness and quality we showed today is the result of serious technical breakthroughs that will transform production," said Dr. Gareth Edwards, CEO of Cubic Motion. "We’ve seen a few groups try this kind of thing before with more primitive technology, but we’ve never seen a system reach the kind of level required to make it a genuine alternative to offline production for facial animation."
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is in development on PlayStation 4 and Windows PC, and is set for release later this year. For a behind-the-scenes look at the real-time capture in action, check out the developer diary from Ninja Theory below. You can see the final product in the trailer above.