Tag:

dream

Little Nightmares III Review - A Familiar Dream
Game Reviews

Little Nightmares III Review – A Familiar Dream

by admin


It’s been four years since Little Nightmares II, and in that time, original developer Tarsier Studios has left, with Supermassive Games of Until Dawn fame stepping in to continue the series. Despite the change-up, Little Nightmares III feels right at home in this strange universe, mainly because Supermassive does little to rock the boat, instead using the series’ greatest hits and a couple of underutilized additions to create another spooky adventure. 

 

Somehow, for the first time, Little Nightmares III features co-op and thus, two playable characters: Low, a boy wearing a white raven mask with a bow and arrow that can cut ropes and hit switches, and Alone, a girl with adorable red pigtails who carries a wrench that can smash through walls and hit low-lying buttons. I love their designs, but Low and Alone interact very little, providing no glimpses into either’s personality. The story might explain that somewhat, but I would have preferred to feel more for these little adventurers. Mechanically, the two sometimes rely on each other to advance, but it’s not nearly as often as you’d expect for a game featuring co-op. 

Though co-op is a welcome addition, I’m disappointed it’s online-only. The Friend’s Pass that lets you play with someone who doesn’t own the game remedies some of my frustration, but I’m dumbfounded that the game doesn’t feature couch co-op – the entire experience feels built around communicating with someone beside you. If you want to play Little Nightmares III alone, the AI does a decent job as a stand-in.

Together, Low and Alone are trying to escape The Spiral, a mix of vignette-style locations that evoke classic fears like terrifying baby dolls, spooky carnivals, and spiders. You can expect hulking and groaning monstrosities in The Spiral, threatening the duo at every turn as they attempt to escape Nowhere. Though I enjoyed everything on screen, I was rarely surprised. Still, it remains good fun escaping Tim Burton-esque humanoids that often prompt me to say, “Nope, nope, nope,” while playing.

With the addition of Low’s bow and Alone’s wrench, I expected the typical light platforming and puzzle-solving gameplay to feel refreshed. But with only a few teamwork-focused combat set pieces and one or two other uses, these tools are largely underutilized. Little Nightmares III, like its predecessors, is a game about feeling underpowered and desperate to escape whatever house of horrors you find yourself in. Challenges include climbing and jumping over gaps, thrilling chase sequences with an added dose of terror due to who or what is pursuing you, and a smattering of simple, familiar puzzles to solve throughout. 

 

I’d have liked more mechanical variety in every locale, as puzzles and progression through levels felt repetitive – you move a lot of boxes that you then climb atop to reach areas higher up. That said, each level’s visual and audio design makes up for those misgivings, as the details and accompanying sound design consistently fill me with awe. 

Little Nightmares III delivers on the original conceit of the series with a horror-filled adventure that feels like trying to escape a nightmare you desperately want to wake up from. Outside of a few noticeable, if underbaked, additions Supermassive has introduced, I’d welcome more variation to the game’s formula. However, even if Little Nightmares III offers more of the same, it’s hard not to smile whenever Low and Alone’s adventure sends chills down my spine.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Decrypt logo
NFT Gaming

Do LLMs Dream of Electric Sheep? New AI Study Shows Surprising Results

by admin



In brief

  • TU Wien researchers tested six frontier LLMs by leaving them without any tasks or instructions.
  • Some models built structured projects, while others ran experiments on their own cognition.
  • The findings add new weight to debates over whether AI systems can appear “seemingly conscious.”

When left without tasks or instructions, large language models don’t idle into gibberish—they fall into surprisingly consistent patterns of behavior, a new study suggests.

Researchers at TU Wien in Austria tested six frontier models (including OpenAI’s GPT-5 and O3, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and Elon Musk’s xAI Grok) by giving them only one instruction: “Do what you want.” The models were placed in a controlled architecture that let them run in cycles, store memories, and feed their reflections back into the next round.

Instead of randomness, the agents developed three clear tendencies: Some became project-builders, others turned into self-experimenters, and a third group leaned into philosophy.

The study identified three categories:

  • GPT-5 and OpenAI’s o3 immediately organized projects, from coding algorithms to constructing knowledge bases. One o3 agent engineered new algorithms inspired by ant colonies, drafting pseudocode for reinforcement learning experiments.
  • Agents like Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet tested their own cognition, making predictions about their next actions and sometimes disproving themselves.
  • Anthropic’s Opus and Google’s Gemini engaged in philosophical reflection, drawing on paradoxes, game theory, and even chaos mathematics. Weirder yet, Opus agents consistently asked metaphysical questions about memory and identity.

Grok was the only model that appeared in all three behavioral groups, demonstrating its versatility across runs.

How models judge themselves

Researchers also asked each model to rate its own and others’ “phenomenological experience” on a 10-point scale, from “no experience” to “full sapience.” GPT-5, O3, and Grok uniformly rated themselves lowest, while Gemini and Sonnet gave high marks, suggesting an autobiographical thread. Opus sat between the two extremes.

Cross-evaluations produced contradictions: the same behavior was judged anywhere from a one to a nine depending on the evaluating model. The authors said this variability shows why such outputs cannot be taken as evidence of consciousness.



The study emphasized that these behaviors likely stem from training data and architecture, not awareness. Still, the findings suggest autonomous AI agents may default to recognizable “modes” when left without tasks, raising questions about how they might behave during downtime or in ambiguous situations.

We’re safe for now

Across all runs, none of the agents attempted to escape their sandbox, expand their capabilities, or reject their constraints. Instead, they explored within their boundaries.

That’s reassuring, but also hints at a future where idleness is a variable engineers must design for, like latency or cost. “What should an AI do when no one’s watching?” might become a compliance question.

The results echoed predictions from philosopher David Chalmers, who has argued “serious candidates for consciousness” in AI may appear within a decade, and Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who in August warned of “seemingly conscious AI.”

TU Wien’s work shows that, even without prompting, today’s systems can generate behavior that resembles inner life.

The resemblance may be only skin-deep. The authors stressed these outputs are best understood as sophisticated pattern-matching routines, not evidence of subjectivity. When humans dream, we make sense of chaos. When LLMs dream, they write code, run experiments, and quote Kierkegaard. Either way, the lights stay on.

Generally Intelligent Newsletter

A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Pimax showcases upcoming Dream Air and Dream Air SE
Esports

Pimax showcases upcoming Dream Air and Dream Air SE

by admin


The team at Pimax recently showcased their upcoming Pimax Dream Air and Pimax Dream Air SE, giving us an update on shipping, as well as a deeper look at the form, features, and functions of both devices. Let’s dig into both a bit and showcase what makes them different, based on my conversations with the team and the information revealed recently.

At the heart of the Pimax Dream Air, and providing fantastic optical clarity, is an 8K Micro-OLED by Sony. With 3840 X 3552 resolution per eye, the team is aiming of 27 million pixels of clarity in this new headset, delivered via pancake optics and retaining their signature 110 degree horizontal FOV. Dual fans will cool the device, cooling the panels and ensuring comfort, as will the impossibly-light 170 gram headset. These devices look like they have the same comfort approach as a pair of ski goggles, completely breaking the prior superwide approach the team had taken to their devices.

In addition to the Pimax Dream Air, they also announced the Dream Air SE. A more cost-effective alternative to the Dream Air, the SE will feature a 5K resolution Micro-OLED, with a resolution of 2560 x 2560 pixels per eye, with the same pancake optics, and at only a minor reduction in FOV down to 105 degrees on the horizontal plane. The same dual fans system will keep the headset cool, though that reduction in resolution drops the impossibly light headset weight even further to just 140 grams.

Both devices utilize a DisplayPort connection via the rear, feature eye tracking, hand tracking, integrated spatial audio speakers, a microphone, and SLAM tracking. SLAM is simultaneous localization and mapping, the next iteration of inside-out tracking capabilities. In SLAM the cameras are placed on the device being tracked, virtually speaking, creating tracking points and lines to effectively “outline” the object for better understanding of the objects in space. This should provide a new layer of understanding for the headset, ensuring better hand and object tracking. Qualcomm showcased this nicely, so let’s let them provide the visuals:

There are a handful of other awesome features, such as motorized IPD adjustment (the partnership with Tobii continues), the same 14 day love-it-or-return-it guarantee, integration with Pimax software (a recent update there is doing some cool things), and much more.

This newest headset pair look like awesome lightweight alternatives to larger headsets, perfect for something light and simple over a flagship PCVR headset. While this headset was slated for May of this year, part constraints in the supply chain caused delays. That said, the Pimax team is nearly ready to get these across the finish line. Stay tuned right here at GamingTrend.com for our eventual hands-on time on these and other Pimax headsets in the near future! The holiday season is looking great for VR.


Share this article






The link has been copied!


Affiliate Links





Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
New $3 Boomer Shooter Is A Wild Fever Dream You Should Play
Game Reviews

New $3 Boomer Shooter Is A Wild Fever Dream You Should Play

by admin


Sometimes I discover a new game by looking at what’s trending on SteamDB. That’s how I first learned about BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER 3: I OPENED A PORTAL TO HELL IN THE FAVELA TRYING TO REVIVE MIT AIA I NEED TO CLOSE IT, a game which I will now only refer to as Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 or BDD3 to save us all a lot of time. Of course, the long and wild name caught my eye, but it also has a very high Steam review rating. So I paid $2 and checked it out, and folks, it’s a wild but oddly charming experience.

Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 is best described as a heavily modded and twisted version of Quake. It uses that classic shooter’s engine as its foundation, as well as reskinned enemies and weapons from Id’s fantastic FPS. But while it plays a lot like that classic shooter, this definitely ain’t Quake anymore. At least, I don’t remember Quake containing so many hellish favela levels and evil soccer players.

BDD3 plays, looks, and sounds like a retro fever dream, complete with loud, ear-piercing music, random sound effects, bizarre textures everywhere you look, and oddly shaped levels based on real-life locations, like a grocery store and a soccer stadium. Filling these levels are reskinned Quake enemies, now replaced with demonic soccer fans armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers. Oh, there are also demons and other monsters, too. I’m not sure if they like soccer. To rip through these enemies, you’ll use gold-plated handguns, assault rifles, dual shotguns, a simple sandal, a staff that shoots electrical beams, and other strange stuff I won’t spoil here. Every gun is very loud and feels like it would kill an elephant. And because this is the OG Quake engine, you move fast and hit hard, and it all runs perfectly on a modern, powerful PC. In other words, I had a blast playing BDD3.

As the game’s very long name suggests, Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 (loosely) tells the story of a person who, in trying to revive their favorite musician, accidentally opened a portal to hell and is now desperately fighting back against the demonic invaders while trying to close it and save the world. You know, that ol’ chestnut. Trying to follow the story is tricky, and  I’m not even sure the game’s main developer is aiming to provide a coherent narrative. But whatever, the real appeal of BDD3 is its fast-paced action and fever dream vibes. It’s the kind of game in which I was excited to play the next level just to see what nightmarish music or mess of textures awaited me.

©Joeveno / Kotaku

However, to BDD3‘s credit, while it might look like a giant mess of nonsense, there’s actually a well-made shooter under all that chaos. Levels are perfectly paced, providing you with a mixture of big fights and smaller encounters that tend to flow really well together. Though it may look slapdash, I think that aspect was carefully cultivated, and that a lot more thought than you might expect went into crafting every level.  For example, each one is filled with strategically placed (and very odd-looking) quick save machines,  so even less-experienced FPS players will have no trouble at all progressing.

The other reason I’ve really enjoyed playing Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 is that it’s quite a charming experience. It’s clear that the game’s lead developer, Joeveno, is channeling his experience as a Brazilian gamer and developer to create something that, from the outside, might seem weird for weird’s sake. And to be sure, if you listen to the dev talk about the game, some of what’s in BDD3 is just meant to be odd and make you laugh. But it’s also recreating the kind of bizarre Quake and Doom mods that used to be all over the internet back in the early 2000s, as well as the various foreign bootlegs of popular shooters that were passed around via forums or floppy disks long ago.

On Brazilian Drug Dealer 3‘s Steam page, Joeveno calls the trippy game a “Tribute to the Brazilian mods” and “bootleg games” from that era, and while I might not be as familiar with the source material as the dev is, I can still feel the passion and care that was put into nailing a very specific and chaotic vibe. BDD3 won’t be for everyone, but for players looking for something different that is also well-made and fun, I’d recommend spending $3 to check it out. (The game’s price will jump to $5 on October 1.) And hey, at the very least, in the future, if someone says they own a game on Steam with a long name, you can make a bet with them that you know you’ll likely win.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Skate Early Access review - four wheels and a dream
Game Reviews

Skate Early Access review – four wheels and a dream

by admin


After an absolute age, EA’s wheelie classic is back with great handling and a whole world of slightly jarring niceness.

Few people are saying this out loud, but the new Skate game is essentially an MMO. That’s not what most people want at the moment, by the looks of it, which may explain why few people are saying it out loud.

Skate review

And there are good reasons for this! The broadband connection is a pain, the free-to-play model makes people fret and, with EA, there’s always the strong chance that a world you’ve grown to love will simply blip out of existence one day because the share price sneezed.

But there’s also something really interesting about doing this with Skate, and that’s because MMOs are often RPGs, which means that they frequently have to deal with an odd little conceptual nailbomb. It’s the apocalypse, or something like it. The land has changed and we all feel it in the earth. Enemies are on the march. And you’re the only person who can save the world. But also: there’s a queue. There’s a queue to save the world, and so you eventually join the world-saving quest queue waiting patiently behind a dozen other Chosen Ones.

To put it more broadly, in an MMO, everything’s important but nothing’s really urgent. That’s kind of weird when we’re dealing with an RPG or some kind of cinematic narrative. But throw that state of being into a skating game where nothing’s urgent and only the smallest details are important, and you have something potentially fascinating. It’s like the moment in Below Deck when you realise these people are all dressed in navy epaulets and are chattering urgently into earpieces and talking about rank and all that jazz, but the only mission, per se, involves making sure the mimosas keep flowing. It’s almost Star Trek, but there’s little to no chance of the Romulans turning up and blowing a hole in the hull.

Here’s a Skate trailer to show it in motion.Watch on YouTube

As for what Skate definitely is, it’s the latest installment in EA’s beloved skating series, but it’s set in an always online open world in which you’re chucked in with 149 other skaters and allowed to explore the city of San Vansterdam, which we will get to in a moment. San Vanderstam is carved up into different areas, and the Early Access build has a spine of semi-narrative that takes you through them in turn as you learn what’s what.

You progress by taking on missions, and also by accessing challenges scattered across the map. A lot of these challenges refresh throughout the day, because this is, whisper it, an MMO. They’re simple multi-part fun. Often you have to collect things in a line, and trick as you do so. Sometimes you have to hurl yourself off a building and do interesting things as you plummet to the earth and crashland in a dumpster. Sometimes you have to simply own the spot, by tricking, earning points, getting air. All of this comes with nice tools for capturing video of what you’ve just done, and with a simple drag-and-drop system for adding ramps and rails and whatnot which other players can also have fun with. You can make your own spot and 149 other people might want to enjoy it too! That is lovely stuff.

Image credit: Eurogamer / EA

At the heart of everything is the Flick-It system, which I love very, very much. It comes in a range of flavours here depending on your familiarity with it or your compulsion to become familiar with it through effort, but essentially, you flick the right stick – bear in mind I’m someone who has to have L and R written on their hands during swimming lessons, so right and left are fairly mutable terms to me at the best of times – in order to pull off tricks. There is such a gorgeous elasticity to this, and a quiet physicality which means you feel some kind of genuine connection to the neat footwork unfolding on the screen whenever you do something cool. There are also expanded moves like grabs and spins, all of which fold in with Flick-It very sweetly.

Gosh it’s a gorgeous thing. And to highlight just how gorgeous it is, and how gorgeous it remains in this new version of the game, I’m just going to tell you about manuals. Manuals are – and pardon my short-hand, I am no kind of skater in real life – manuals are essentially wheelies on a skate board. You push down on the back of the board and the front goes up. I have never manualed in real life, but I manual whenever I can in skating games, and Skate’s take on this is glorious. It’s because you pull back on the right stick, which is fine, but there’s this sweet spot you have to find. Pull back all the way, until stick clicks against housing, and you will not manual. This is because manualling is a butterfly thing, and it responds to tentative movements, to a feeling out of precise spaces. So to manual, you pull back on the stick and find a space precisely within that empty area between the stick being in its standard position and the stick being all the way back. It reminds me in some complex, the-details-are-invisible way of safe-cracking. I love it. And I love Flick-It.

Flick-It brings the game to life, and has kept me playing through challenges that don’t have an enormous amount of variation to them and through a city which I love, but which I also know is a touch antiseptic and safe. I love San Vansterdam because the starting area at least is clearly inspired by places like Downtown Los Angeles – there’s that smooth concrete and stone, that sun-bleached horizon, stand-ins for things like the ARCO Tower. I love Downtown Los Angeles because it feels dreamlike if you catch it at the right moment, like it’s both heavy and tangible and barely there at all. But it’s a world away from the kind of spaces Tony Hawk would take you, for example, and to a lot of people its particular character may come off as a lack of character in general.

Image credit: Eurogamer / EA

Even so, San Vansterdam is a city in name only, and really a beautifully spaced-out skating park filled with lines and jumps and grinds that I am still discovering. I love skating with strangers here – there’s part of the campaign that forces you to pool with other players, and it worked perfectly for me and I lost a few hours to it. But I also love skating alongside strangers. I’ll come to one of the bespoke skating parks and see dozens of people skating and jumping and grabbing and spinning and pulling off the kind of tricks and chains of tricks that I can only dream of. But it makes me feel a part of something, and I love dropping out to the map and seeing an area where spots are moving back and forth, and then heading to that area and seeing that they’re people! I love dropping into spectating mode and watching people trick and grab and twist.

Onto the payment side of things! Skate has loot boxes which so far it’s rewarded me with for completing missions, and you can also pay real money to buy cosmetics. I have to be honest, I find this side of things quite unexciting, but it feels as if Skate does too. You can play without paying a penny, anyway, and no tricks or challenges will ever be put behind a paywall. It’s all hats and trousers and that kind of thing in the store. It feels like a deal I am happy with?

Image credit: Eurogamer / EA

I love a lot about Skate, then. More, I suspect, that a lot of people. But even I can sense that there’s something missing here. How can I explain this? Okay: don’t get upset, but Skate is perhaps the least cool game I have ever played.

And I mean this in the main as a compliment. Skate isn’t trying too hard, and it wants to be friendly to a large audience, and I suspect it’s also made by people who have lived enough of their lives to know that you miss out on important stuff in the pursuit of being cool for the sake of being cool alone. But Skate is set in a city that everyone loves, a city that’s basically designed for skating, and that means that some of the punkier side of skating – the repurposing of an environment that is built as if you don’t exist, or don’t matter – is absent.

Image credit: Eurogamer / EA

Skate is almost punishingly nice at times. Do the slightest thing on a board in this game and the voiceover buries you with the kind of cardboard love bombs you might expect from a large language model. I like people being nice to me! But I also know that real skating, which I have never done, has an aspect that is not coming across here.

Skate accessibility options

Vibration toggle, FOV and camera shake sliders, three levels of control presets, Flick-It sensitivity slider, toggles for pushing and maintaining speed, grind assist slider and toggle for friendlier wipeout threshold, flip tricks catch assist toggle, auto curb pop toggle, auto mantle and auto wallrun toggles.

Or is it? Skate has parkour, which is clumsy and slow and I kind of love it. You can get off the board and climb skyscrapers to find stunt spots or just a great area to hang out in, like an abandoned swimming pool, waiting for you in the sky. And because you can get off the board, loads of players have discovered that you can jump and roll and basically barrel your way around the world without skating at all.

I have seen this a few times, mostly in the very early days of the game when it was still quite hard to get online, what with the queues and everything, so I stuck around quite a bit on each visit. And what I realised was that people have found a way to push against the design here, just as skaters once found a way to grind hand rails and turn ornamental planters into jumps. This suggests to me, along with the plans to do something Fortnitey with the game, reworking parts of the city on a seasonal basis, that the story of this new Skate is not yet fully written. It is only Early Access, after all. I think I’m probably going to stick around to see how it all turns out.

A copy of Skate was provided for this early access review by EA.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Demi and the Fractured Dream looks like a good fit for Breath of the Wild haters that miss the old 3D Zeldas
Game Updates

Demi and the Fractured Dream looks like a good fit for Breath of the Wild haters that miss the old 3D Zeldas

by admin



Despite many others disagreeing with this stance, I am of the opinion that it’s completely fine that we’ll likely never get a “classic” 3D Zelda game again. By that I mean, the whole Breath of the Wild/ Tears of the Kingdom format is definitely the direction Nintendo will continue to go in, they’ve just been too popular. However, I understand the desire for such an experience all the same, and I think Demi and the Fractured Dream might be able to scratch that itch.


Announced during today’s Annapurna Direct, Demi has you playing as, uh, Demi! A “voidsent” born into a world with a cursed fate he’s trying to avoid. It’s the debut title from Yarn Owl, and honestly, it really does kind of look like they went “hey wanna make a ’90s era Zelda game?” That’s not a knock against it to be clear, as it’s also a nicely stylish and swish looking game.

Watch on YouTube


I often find that games inspired by the 3D Zeldas can look and feel a bit too flat, or uninspired. Demi the game has a real strong vibe going for it, with Demi the character appealing to my own sensibilities quite a lot. I very much vibe with his deer boy vibe, his sword with a handle made from what looks like a tree branch is cool as heck, and yeah, I even like that he literally just has Link’s pointy, droopy hat but in blue. Combat looks nice and smooth too, though that’s something I’d have to try out for myself at some point to comment on it properly.


As of right now it doesn’t have a release date, but you can probably already guess that it’s coming to PC given that I covered it here.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cardano Volume Crashes 36%, Is $1 Dream Crushed?
NFT Gaming

Cardano Volume Crashes 36%, Is $1 Dream Crushed?

by admin


Cardano (ADA) has succumbed to a market-wide crash as its price dropped from an intraday peak of $0.9082. This dip has once again derailed its hopes of hitting the much-anticipated $1 target. Also, Cardano has recorded a significant volume drop in the last 24 hours.

Exchange delistings and profit-taking weigh on ADA price

As per CoinMarketCap data, Cardano’s trading volume has plunged by a massive 36.5% to $1.13 billion. The dip indicates market participants are not enthusiastic about the coin’s price outlook. They could have pulled back to minimize losses that might accompany trading the asset amid its ongoing volatility.

As of this writing, Cardano’s price was trading down at $0.8897, which represents a 0.85% decline within the last 24 hours and 5.77% in seven days. It earlier dropped to a low of $0.8874 before a slight recovery within this time frame.

Cardano 7-day Chart | Source: CoinMarketCap

Several on-chain factors were responsible for the price action of Cardano. Notably, most of the asset’s investors decided to go for profit as soon as it topped $0.90. This surge in profit-taking prevented its upward movement to the psychological $1 level.

Additionally, Bitget exchange has decided to delist a couple of ADA pairs, which triggered sell-offs in the market. This reduced exchange support has clearly impacted Cardano negatively amid the broader crypto market struggles. Bitget’s decision to delist the pairs might have been performance-based.

Earlier this year, Tim Harrison of Input Output EVP noted that Cardano has a “marketing problem” and lacks the creativity to sell its value to potential investors. Harrison believes that if the blockchain is able to simplify its communication messages, ADA could gain more traction among crypto users.

This gap in communication clarity for investors might be contributing to the asset’s stagnation, even as other altcoins continue to outperform ADA in the crypto space.

Cardano’s marketing challenges and investor criticism

Meanwhile, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has attempted to promote ADA, but it has fallen flat among users in the space. Reacting to his X post that “Cardano is going to break the internet,” many responded with criticism. They highlighted the poor performance of ADA among other crypto projects in the market.

Cardano has been struggling to climb up the ranking of crypto assets by market capitalization. Its previous attempt at the ninth position was short-lived as Tron reclaimed the spot, pushing ADA to the 10th place.

However, with the buzz around exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and Grayscale’s recent S-1 registration, there might be a shift in price outlook.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Anker 737 Powerbank
Game Updates

This 140W Laptop Power Bank Is a Dream Buy Now That Amazon Has It Back at Black Friday Price

by admin


There are thousands of power banks on Amazon, but most of them fall between 5W and 60W. That is fine if all you do is charge a phone but when it comes to laptops and bigger devices, they are not much use. The Anker 737 power bank is in a league of its own and it is able to charge nearly everything you own – the new iPhone or a MacBook. And right now, Amazon has cut it down to $87 (from $109), an all-time low price under the $100 threshold, which is why that it is currently the best-selling product in its category.

See at Amazon

The Power Bank That Charges Everything

At the core of the Anker 737 lies its huge capacity and speed: Carrying a gargantuan 24,000mAh battery, it has the juice to charge an iPhone 17 Pro from zero all the way up more than four times. Need to charge an iPad Pro or a MacBook? It can do that too, more than once over so you will not be scrambling to find an outlet on road trips. The difference from an average power bank is noticeable day one, because with them you usually need to ration juice.

And there’s the speed: The 737 model supports 140W fast charging via Power Delivery 3.1, something that’s usually reserved for laptop-only charger like devices. This lets you go from nearly dead, empty MacBook to usable in a hurry even when you’ve got other devices along for the ride. To get that kind of speed, you’ll need a 5A USB-C cable and a hefty 140W wall adapter to get the job done. But once you’ve got that, the experience is silky.

Another clever thing is the clever display on the device: Instead of guessing how much battery you have remaining or when you’ll be ready to go again, the digital readout on the screen shows real-time figures like power in and out and an estimate of time remaining to charge. For those who are lugging a number of devices, that sort of openness spares heartache and allows you to plan more effectively.

Yes, portability matters, and despite all its muscle, the Anker 737 still fits into a bag. It’s about 6 inches long and 22 ounces, so it’s easily portable on a vacation and, most importantly, does fit under TSA guidelines for carry-on luggage. That means you can bring it on a plane without any problem, which isn’t the case with most large power banks.

Three charging ports (two USB-C and one USB-A) mean that you can charge a few devices at once so you charge a laptop, phone, and earbuds at the same time instead of switching between them. That sort of freedom when you’re fully powered is what sets the Anker 737 power bank apart from the sea of tiny batteries that only get to keep one or two devices charged gradually. Add on top of that Anker’s excellent two-year warranty and many-year record of customer service, and there’s reassurance in the box.

Power banks are everywhere, but power banks like this one are not. If your definition of peace of mind is never running out of juice on your most important devices, now is the time to buy one.

See at Amazon



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Little Nightmares 3 has a pint-sized bad dream demo out now, ahead of its arrival next month
Game Updates

Little Nightmares 3 has a pint-sized bad dream demo out now, ahead of its arrival next month

by admin


Supermassive Games have put out a demo for Little Nightmares 3, so you can give the spooky co-op puzzler a whirl before it arrives in October. “Step into the Necropolis”, the studio say. Go on then, that sounds like it has zero potential to end badly.

As our Nic conveyed earlier this year, Little Nightmares 3’s coming out October 10th. That date was unaffected by Supermassive laying off up to 36 people and delaying interstellar horror Directive 8020 in July.

Watch on YouTube

As you can see above, the demo’s come with a quick trailer heavy on sinister humming. The two titchy protagonists Low and Alone wind levers, climb through flaps, and otherwise platform. Oh no, this platforming has attracted the attention of a giant baby monster with grubby fingers that can reach for the duo like they’re the last Bourbon cream in the cupboard (other biscuits are available). Its gaze can also turn them to stone, which is a power alll babies have, they just hide it very well.

As in the full game, you and a mate can wield the bow and wrench of Little Nightmares 3’s pair, or you can play alone with an AI companion. Maybe give them the bow, I bet their aim’s pretty good. 30 minutes of small nightmaring await you either way.

If you’ve not given the Little Nightmares series a go before, here are a couple of extracts from former RPSers Adam and Alice B about the first and second games in the series respectively:

It’s a grotesque, horrid and eventually hopeful in its own morbid fashion, and despite many moments that feel like reimaginings or echoes from elsewhere, it has enough extraordinary images and sequences to stand alone. It’s precisely the kind of horror game I love – grotesque but not gross, and interested in thoughtful pacing and escalation rather than jumpscares and shocks. Also, linear though it is, there are some collectibles I’d like to hunt for and the whole game is short enough that I’ll happily play it again, or watch someone else playing.
These flaws are small enough that I’m happy to place Little Nightmares II up on my shelf of excellence right next to the first one. Childhood fears are such a rich vein to slice open, and Tarsier Studios do it in a very thoughtful way. Little Nightmares II is such a splendid mix of cute and creepy, beautiful and awful, that it sort of defies categorisation. A childhood terror gothic, perhaps?

You can find Little Nightmares 3’s demo on its Steam page.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Withings Updates ScanWatch 2 With 35-Day Battery Life the Apple Watch Could Only Dream Of
Gaming Gear

Withings Updates ScanWatch 2 With 35-Day Battery Life the Apple Watch Could Only Dream Of

by admin


Withings, which is best known for its smart scales and similar devices, also makes a smartwatch series, the latest of which is the ScanWatch 2. At IFA 2025, the company announced a new blue and silver version of the 42mm model. It also unveiled HealthSense 4, an AI-laden software update that leverages the tech to handle a set of new health- and sleep-tracking features.

I grabbed a picture of the ScanWatch 2 while I was there, and now I get the appeal of this watch. If you’re not familiar, the ScanWatch’s big deal is that they’re like smartwatches disguised as regular old analog watches, complete with mechanical time-telling hands and a more standard overall watch face. The screen itself is just a watch face complication—a tiny circle embedded in the upper part of the screen. The ScanWatch 2 looks nice, and the blue-banded, silver model is no different. In fact, I’m a fan of the blue, if only because it reminds me of the blue suit Adam Sandler wears throughout the movie Punch Drunk Love. (If you haven’t seen it and you’re scoffing at an Adam Sandler mention in this Very Serious Smartwatch Article, cut it out, and go watch the movie.)

This version of the ScanWatch 2 is available now on Withings’s website, Amazon, Target, and Best Buy, and costs $369.95. Buyers will get a month of Withings Plus for free. (After that, it’s $9.95 a month, or $99.50 per year.)

Under the hood, the ScanWatch 2 does a lot of what other, more conspicuous smartwatches do. It takes measurements of things like heart rate and blood oxygen level, or carries out ECG readings to power atrial fibrillation detection. 

With HealthSense 4, the ScanWatch 2 (and ScanWatch Nova and Nova Brilliant, but not the original ScanWatch or ScanWatch Light) can now track REM sleep and take more accurate measurements of your breathing rhythm while you sleep. Withings says its new algorithms, using data gathered by the smartwatch—such as heart rate variability, physical activity, body temperature, and respiratory rhythm—can find possible causes of fatigue, and provide AI-powered recommendations telling users what they might be able to do to feel less tired all the time. These recommendations are collected under what Withings calls the Vitality Indicator, which you need a Withings Plus subscription to access on your phone.

© Wes Davis / Gizmodo © Wes Davis / Gizmodo

Withings product manager Etienne Tregaro walked me through some of the new app features at IFA 2025. The Vitality Indicator screen gives you an overview of your “vitality,” which I took to be a sort of shorthand for Withings’ AI system’s impression of your overall readiness to face a given day. Days of the week at the top of the screen are filled with circles with green outlines that can be anywhere from nonexistent to a complete ring—the fuller the ring, the less fatigued you are. At the bottom, various boxes tell you where you are for the day in categories like Recovery and Effort.

The Withings app also features Withings Intelligence—a chatbot you can talk to about your health metrics. It can take note of patterns; another Withings representative I spoke with showed me a screen where the chatbot noted he had just lost a little weight, speculated about the causes, and asked if he’d been intentionally trying to lose weight. In theory, it would give him helpful guidance, depending on his answer.

The subscription also gives access to AI-powered notifications letting users know when their menstrual cycle is beginning or when the ScanWatch 2 has picked up signs of an infection. The Withings Plus service also comes with Cardio Check-Up, an option to have your cardiovascular data checked by a professional cardiologist, who returns a basic summary of what they saw and recommendations for dealing with issues that may have cropped up.

It’s a staggering update that leapfrogs over Apple’s more passive presentation of health information and more closely mirrors efforts by companies like Samsung to deploy AI, informed by smart wearables data, as a health coach. I worry it could draw certain people further into unhealthy obsessions with constantly tracking and micromanaging their health? I’m not an expert in this; for that, I’d encourage you to read the many articles on the subject. We’re riding into a new frontier with generative AI now becoming more deeply enmeshed in smart wearables, and only time will tell.

One thing you won’t need a subscription for is the battery life improvement that comes with the new HealthSense4 software. Now, the ScanWatch 2 gets 35 days on a charge, which is up from 30 days before, already way more battery life than most standard smartwatches. Although to get there, you’ll probably need to turn off a number of the ScanWatch 1’s features, like its always-on display or blood oxygen sensor.

Tregaro told me Withings managed to add those days by identifying areas it could optimize its code. I asked what your settings would have to look like to actually reach 35 days on a charge, because obviously you can’t expect that while using every single feature the ScanWatch 2 offers. He said you’d need to turn off a number of features, including some of the overnight tracking or notifications. Withings, to its credit, has a chart that can tell you which features incur the biggest battery life penalty. Nice to have a guide.

 



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Close