Opinion: Nightdive Studios Had Its Best, Most Prolific Year Yet In 2024

19 hours ago 21

For the younger readers amongst you, I suspect that many 3D games from the ‘90s and ‘00s seem rather quaint at best and downright unplayable at worst. It was a period in which the medium was geting to grips with a completely new third dimension; couple this with the limited graphical capabilities of the PlayStation and N64, and you could argue that many titles haven’t aged well.

Me, though? I absolutely love this era. I was six when the PS1 launched in the UK; the perfect age to start enjoying classics like WipEout, Spyro the Dragon, and yes, games that perhaps weren’t suitable for me yet like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil. So when I go back and play titles from this era today, I find them reasonably approachable thanks to an intimate familiarity with the period. Even remasters of games that I’ve not experienced before feel oddly comforting in a way that I can’t quite describe.

Nightdive Studios, founded in 2012, specialises in revamping early 3D games from the ‘90s and ‘00s for the modern age, enhancing the visuals, improving the gameplay, and often adding a host of supplemental material to provide context behind the original titles’ development. It's enjoyed some excellent success stories over the years with the likes of Turok(s), Quake(s), and Doom 64 — alongside the disappointing Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition — but 2024 has undoubtedly been the studio’s best, most prolific year so far.

Nightdive has put out a total of five games this year. Five. And that’s not including the console release for the excellent System Shock remake (which, before you go searching for it, isn't on Switch). For a large company like Nintendo, five games in one year might sound pretty standard given its numerous dev teams and partner studios, but Nightdive is a much smaller, singular team made up of around 40 employees (as of 2022). Granted, it’s now got Atari behind it after the acquisition went through in 2023, but even the once-mighty Atari is an incredibly lean operation compared to its heyday.

The company's CEO, Stephen Kick, called the studio's output this year "stunning" and explored its rapid growth in a recent livestream of its 'Deep Dive' series. "It's a big obstacle," he said, "where we have a lot of companies coming to us with a lot of projects, and we just don't have enough people." He is, however, quick to clarify that this is a good problem to have, noting that development costs remain conservative and that the company can operate on a "lean and mean" level without necessarily worrying about meeting lofty targets to maintain a huge staff.

As for which games it’s put out, you’ve got Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster, PO’ed Definitive Edition, the updated DOOM + DOOM II (and the brand-new ‘Legacy of Rust’ campaign), Killing Time: Resurrected, and The Thing: Remastered. Jeez Louise. While there’s an obvious preference for the FPS genre here, Nightdive’s output nevertheless represents a delicious combination of beloved known entities and long-forgotten curios. I had never heard of Killing Time before Nightdive’s remaster, but after rinsing it earlier this year, it’s become one of my absolute favourites thanks to its utterly bizarre narrative and outrageous enemy design.

The release of DOOM + DOOM II seems particularly noteworthy given that both games were already available on Switch courtesy of the now-defunct studio Nerve Software. These versions had their issues at launch, but were patched to the point of being genuinely excellent portable versions of the original classics. These are no longer purchasable, meaning the new version, built in Nightdive's KEX engine, has completely supplanted Nerve's.

Of course, Nightdive can’t get all of the credit; were it not for developers like Studio 3DO and Computer Artworks, there would be no originals to remaster. But the work that Nightdive puts into these titles to not only modernise and preserve them, but also improve upon near-enough every aspect of the gameplay experience is second to none. You’ve got rock-solid 60fps performance on every game with the ability to fine-tune the visuals as you see fit. For those on PS5 and Xbox, meanwhile, you can max out the presentation at 4K/120FPS, and it’s simply divine. A sign of things to come on Switch 2?

For some, I’m sure that no amount of polish would make some of these games seem even remotely appealing, and that’s fine. PO’ed Definitive Edition is still a weird, often frustrating experience regardless of how nice it looks now or how smoothly it runs. It’s cool if these sorts of games aren’t your thing - although I was personally aghast when PO’ed was included in Metacritic’s ‘Worst Games of 2024’ list. Come on now, let's be sensible!

What we can all wholeheartedly agree on, however, is that regardless of a game's original quality, the work Nightdive does in bringing it up to modern standards is exemplary. It’s easy to see why Atari wanted to snap up the studio. With the one-two punch of Nightdive and Digital Eclipse (which also had a great 2024, by the way), Atari seems well on its way to fulfilling its mission of becoming the final word on retro gaming. While Digital Eclipse is a true pioneer of the current wave of interactive gaming documentaries, Nightdive has the early 3D era all wrapped up. The team has absolutely killed it in what is easily its best year yet, and I can’t wait to see what 2025 brings.

Have you played any of Nightdive's games from 2024? What are you hoping to see from the studio in the new year? Let us know with a comment in the usual place.