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Coinbase hacker spent stolen funds on 100k Solana - 1
Crypto Trends

Coinbase hacker spent stolen funds on 100k Solana

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On-chain analysis shows that the Coinbase hacker spent $22.95 million worth of USD Coin and spent it on Solana. This marks the second major SOL purchase made by the hacker.

Summary

  • The Coinbase hacker recently swapped $22.95 million DAI into USDC and bridged it to Solana to buy over 100,000 SOL.
  • Since the attack, the hacker has executed at least five major on-chain transactions involving Bitcoin, Ethereum, DAI, and Solana.

According to on-chain analyst Ember CN, the hacker swapped around 22.95 million DAI into USDC only a few hours before bridging the funds. Not long after, the hacker bridged the 22.95 million USDC to the Solana network to purchase 100,913 SOL at an average price of $227.

As of Oct. 3 on 09:24 UTC, the hacker had emptied out most of their holdings on the wallet address, leaving only $0.47 worth of Solana (SOL).

This marks the largest SOL purchase made by the hacker allegedly responsible for draining up to $400 million from a cyberattack that occurred in May 2025. Just a month prior, the hacker also swapped DAI (DAI) for USDC before using the stolen funds to purchase 38,126 Solana.

The Coinbase hacker had spent stolen funds to purchase 100,913 SOL | Source: EmberCN

At press time, Solana is trading at $231 after rising by 3% in the past 24 hours. In the past month, SOL has been on an upward trend, having risen by 10.8%. However, it is still standing below its all-time high at $293 by 21.2%.

Coinbase hacker moves stolen funds from May cyberattack

So far, the Coinbase hacker has made at least five transactions on-chain since robbing the major crypto exchange of at least $400 million in damages. In May 2025, the hacker swapped about $42.5 million from Bitcoin (BTC) into ETH (ETH) via THORChain. Within the same month, the hacker sold 26,347 Ethereum for 68.18 million DAI. The sale was done at a price of $2,588.

Later in July, the hacker repurchased 5,513 ETH by spending 14.86 million DAI at $2,696. After a period of dormancy, the hacker appeared to use more DAI converted into USDC to buy chunks of large Solana purchases, much like the most recent one.

The May 2025 breach on Coinbase reportedly impacted nearly 70,000 users as the hacker deployed coordinated social-engineering on the attack.

To carry out the cyberattack, hackers had bribed overseas customer-support contractors to extract user records between December 2024 and May 2025. The attack compromised personal data, including full names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, masked bank account numbers, and government-issued ID scans.



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I spent 30 brilliant days with this powerful pre-built mini gaming PC: Wired2Fire HAL 9000 review
Game Updates

I spent 30 brilliant days with this powerful pre-built mini gaming PC: Wired2Fire HAL 9000 review

by admin


Small form factor gaming PCs are getting ever more popular, but the often fiddly assembly process is one that you don’t need to undertake yourself. This is where the Wired2Fire HAL 9000 Mini PC I’ve been testing recently comes in. It’s a well-specced mini PC with full-size desktop parts, including an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X processor, RTX 5070 Ti graphics card, 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM and a 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade SSD. All of this fits inside the Cooler Master NR200P Max V2, an 18-litre case that ranks amongst our top Mini ITX PC case recommendations.

The price? From Wired2Fire’s website, this PC will cost you £1924, including the cost of a Windows licence. For context, if you’re willing to shop around and order from various UK retailers, a DIY version of this PC will cost you £1674 at minimum. That works out to a modest £250 premium for a pre-built system with two-week build time, five-year build warranty and two-year part warranty. I particularly like the fact that the use of off-the-shelf parts means that you’ll avoid a lot of the future upgrade woes common to bigger sellers like HP or Lenovo that use bespoke cases, motherboards and power supplies.

In order to be worth recommending though, Wired2Fire needs to deliver on more than just a good parts list. We’ll also be looking at how well the system is packed for delivery, configured in terms of BIOS and software, and supported by its warranty and customer service. And of course, we’ll be checking to see whether we get the expected level of performance from a SFF PC with these particular parts. Click the quick links below or scroll on for our full findings!

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Wired2Fire HAL 9000 – Packaging and Cable Management

When it comes to the packaging, we just want a box that prevents any reasonable damage in shipping, and Wired2Fire does hit that standard.

The PC was double-boxed, with the PC case packaging inside a larger cardboard box filled with air bags. The main PC was wrapped in foam, with bubble wrap protecting the internal components. It’s sometimes preferable for GPUs to be shipped separately, but that does require a certain level of knowledge from the end user – so shipping with it installed is fine if that internal protection is present. In taking the PC out of the packaging, I can’t actually find fault with it – Wired2Fire’s attention here is first-rate.

A gallery of the PC packaging and cable management – click to expand.

Alongside the Cooler Master case box, you also get the boxes for the other components, including the ASRock B850I Lighting WiFi motherboard (an upgrade from the MSI B650 choice listed on the website), an envelope with instruction manuals, a Windows 11 Home licence, a kettle plug power cable and a patch cable.

In removing the packaging and the side panels for a closer look, cable management is also excellent, with good channelling and consistent tie-downs using both the case’s built-in wraps and some handy cable ties. It’s certainly a better job than I could do in a few days of trying, so good marks there, too.

Wired2Fire HAL 9000 – Part Selection

On the front of part selection, the parts installed in this PC aren’t totally consistent with those listed on the Wired2Fire website. However, the discrepancies are generally for the better, with our unit coming with a newer B850 motherboard and a well-regarded Asus Tuf Gaming RTX 5070 Ti. In taking a closer look at the innards of the PC, the RAM used is RGB-enabled Adata XPG Lancer Blade DDR5-6000 RAM with relatively loose CL48 timings – a little off the CL30 kits we recommend but not egregiously so.

The AIO cooler and PSU are the Cooler Master ones that come with the NR200P Max case – this isn’t actually a V2 version, as there isn’t a front-panel USB-C connector, in spite of what the Wired2Fire website says. The PSU inside is a Cooler Master V850 80+ Gold SFX unit that beats Nvidia’s recommended minimum wattage for the 5070 Ti and gives a good amount of headroom and efficiency, too. Overall, it’s a sensible selection, though a proper Max V2 case with front panel USB-C and some tighter RAM timings wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Wired2Fire HAL 9000 – BIOS Configuration

One of the things that Wired2Fire mentions when you configure this PC is that by default they provide a “moderate CPU optimisation” package that they say is “suitable for gaming and workstation usage alike”. This is a free option that’s enabled by default when you spec the system out, with a more extreme overclock available for £80.

In our case, this seems to refer to enabling the gaming mode on the ASRock motherboard BIOS, with the “Zen 5 Gaming Optimisation” setting set to the AGESA default and the “Cinebench profile performance boost mode” enabled. I didn’t see evidence of more substantive changes, such as enabling PBO, but the RAM was at least set to its EXPO 6000MT/s 48-48-48-96 setting at 1.10V. This is about what we’d expect for a free “optimisation” package.

Likewise, the PC was shipped with the latest BIOS version, 3.2, available at the time of ordering. The chipset and graphics drivers in Windows were also updated to the latest versions, which is always nice to see.

Wired2Fire HAL 9000 – Warranty and Customer Service

Another advantage of a pre-built gaming PC is having a support network to turn to if you have any issues, rather than needing to trawl through Reddit and other online forums. Wired2Fire’s support page gives the options of a phone number, email address and a web form.

For convenience, I used the web form to see if they could diagnose a couple of issues. First of all, I stated that the RAM wasn’t showing as overclocked in the BIOS, and if they could help me with enabling EXPO. They replied with a short and helpful answer just seven minutes later.

To test them a little harder, I went back and noted that one of the RAM sticks had mysteriously become unseated during shipping, and that one of them wasn’t being recognised in the BIOS. They came back with a link to a YouTube video to help me get the theoretically unseated RAM back in the system a handful of hours after my original message.

The terms of their warranty are stated on the website. Desktop PCs are covered by a “Standard Desktop PC Collect and Return Warranty” that covers the costs of labour charges for any repair work within five years, as well as the process of repair, replacement or refund for faulty parts within two years. Replacement parts will be dealt with like-for-like, or one that is “at least as good in terms of performance as the faulty part”, while for refunds, if before six months it’s the full value and after six months it’s the “equivalent second-hand value” of the item. Where an item is shown to be faulty, Wired2Fire will cover the costs of collection and return. As is typical, there are exclusions, such as accidental damage or items damaged in transit due to inadequate packaging.

Wired2Fire HAL 9000 – Gaming Performance

Arguably, the most important piece of this puzzle is how this Wired2Fire HAL 9000 Mini PC performs. We’ve tested its core components previously, but not necessarily together, so it’ll be interesting to see how it performs. The 5070 Ti is a serious contender for our favourite mid-tier GPU, which Rich equated to in our review as in “4080 territory, or more with an overclock.”

As with my testing with the Ryzen 5 5600 PC, I’ve taken a broad selection of games to best judge how this small form factor PC performs across 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions. The tests were run at the highest settings at native resolution in most cases for comparison purposes, so it’s often possible to achieve higher performance by dropping settings and/or enabling upscaling using DLSS, FSR or XeSS. All games were tested on a Philips Evnia 32M2N8900, a 4K 240Hz QD-OLED panel.

To provide some extra context, we also have the returning results from the 5600 and 7800X3D systems with an RX 7800 XT, as games were run at the same settings.

Here are the ray-traced performance graphs – click to expand.

You can see the array of graphs and data above and below, and in short, I was thoroughly impressed with the general performance of the system. We’ve got particularly impressive results in the likes of Indiana Jones and Black Myth Wukong that virtually double that of the 5600 PC, with RT performance being seriously potent. There are also healthy margins in F1 24 and Forza Horizon 5. I felt that Stalker 2 and rasterised Black Myth Wukong might be considered slight disappointments, with results that weren’t as high as expected.

Here are the raster performance graphs – click to expand.

Generally, I think this Wired2Fire system is suited extremely well for 1440p and 4K AAA gaming thanks to that combo of the 5070 Ti, as Rich also noted in our 5070 Ti review. The mid-range Ryzen 7 9700X also provides ample power for these games, while being more efficient than its predecessor and providing a solid uptick in both gaming and content creation performance – as Will highlighted in our 9700X review.

To back this up, I put the 9700X through a couple of industry-favourite synthetic benchmarks, with runs of Geekbench 6, Cinebench R20, R23 and 2024. Those results against the 5600 and 7800X3D can be found in the handy table below.

Benchmark
AMD Ryzen 5 5600
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X

Geekbench 6 (Single)
2111
2691
3214

Geekbench 6 (Multi)
9489
14911
14435

Cinebench R20
4375
6878
6320

Cinebench R23 (Single)
1445
1763
2135

Cinebench R23 (Multi)
11224
17541
16073

Cinebench 2024 (Single)
89
110
128

Cinebench 2024 (Multi)
647
1058
832

It seems as if the 9700X is also being adequately cooled by the case’s built-in 280mm AIO, as I noticed a peak average die temperature of 75.6°C when running Cinebench 2024. Likewise, during a run of 4K Furmark, the 5070 Ti hit a 66°C average with the fans at 65 percent utilisation.

Wired2Fire HAL 9000 – Conclusion

The Wired2Fire HAL 9000 Mini PC probably takes the biscuit as one of the most sensible and solid prebuilt PCs I’ve looked at in some time. It’s got a set of components that, for the most part, make a good amount of sense and provide some fantastic gaming and content performance to boot.

It’s also packaged well, with excellent protection. The system itself is logically built and is well cable managed, while its BIOS is pretty much standard. It’s also up-to-date and comes with a clean Windows install you do yourself, complete with product key, so no bloatware or anything is present.

Customer service is also good, with quick and simple responses to the couple of questions I had, while the warranty terms provide a good amount of peace of mind if anything does go wrong.

I think I’d happily put my trust into a smaller builder such as Wired2Fire in this instance, given their excellent attentiveness and attention to detail with the system provided. The markup on the overall cost of the unit isn’t unreasonable either, and it doesn’t seem like they’d take you for a ride. Good job, chaps.



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I spent three months with Telly, the free TV that’s always showing ads
Product Reviews

I spent three months with Telly, the free TV that’s always showing ads

by admin


The last few months, I’ve felt like I’m living in a cyberpunk movie. Each night, when I get ready to wind down, I reach for the remote to turn on a TV I got for free. When I hit the power button, a 55-inch screen lights up, but so does a smaller display beneath it. Widgets fill the secondary screen alongside a rotating ad that you can’t dismiss.

Before I can even navigate to the Netflix app, I hear something. “Hello, hello friends!” A smiling woman appears on the screen wearing a gray dress, her brown hair neatly styled into gentle waves. It’s the host of the TV’s built-in news segment, which uses the AI likeness of actress Alison Fiori to deliver today’s top stories on a loop.

This is the future of TV, according to Telly, a company that offers a free TV in exchange for the privilege of constantly blaring ads in your face. It puts the ads in a 10-inch-wide “smart” display that sits just below a built-in sound bar and runs the entire length of the TV. The screen stays on at all times — while you watch shows, movies, YouTube videos, and play video games. Even when you turn off the TV with a tap of the remote’s power button, the secondary screen remains illuminated. It will only turn off if you hold the power button for three seconds.

The bottom display shows you everything from sports scores, the current weather, and stock prices. Photo by Emma Roth / The Verge

Despite my attempts to tune out the lower display, video ads and moving widgets draw my eyes in. Along with displaying the date, time, and current weather conditions, it shows a constant stream of headlines in a news ticker, plus stock prices and even links to news stories from outlets like Fox News, which you can click into and read on the top screen. You can remove or add widgets, but there’s no way to get rid of the ad on the right side that refreshes every so often. Under Telly’s terms of service, you can’t cover up the display. Even if you tried, it just wouldn’t be practical, since you need the secondary screen to navigate to different apps and control inputs. There are settings you can use to decrease the brightness of the secondary display’s backlight, but I found that turning it down to “0” doesn’t make much of a difference.

Some of the ads shown on the bottom screen prompt you to scan a QR code, or will show a prompt to press a button on your remote to move it up to the top display for more information. The ads often appear as videos, which can draw your eyes away from what’s on the screen even more. There is no sound for video ads, but Telly will still display small subtitles that are hard to read if you’re far away from the TV. I’ve seen a range of ads on the little screen, such as some from Sunglasses Hut and Old Navy, as well as location-specific commercials from a nearby crematorium and car dealerships. I saw these no matter what I was watching — whether it was 90 Day Fiancé, Carême, or Law & Order reruns. The ads just kept rolling.

To reserve a Telly, you must agree to use the device as the main TV in your home, constantly keep it connected to the internet, and regularly watch it. If the company finds that you violate these rules, Telly will ask you to return the TV (and charge a $500 fee if you don’t send it back). I’m not sure how strictly Telly tracks the usage of its TVs. At one point, I left my TV unplugged for three weeks while away from home and received no warning from Telly.

The ads just keep rolling. Photo by Emma Roth / The Verge

“We’re not here to micromanage short-term dips but to ensure Telly continues to be a great fit over time,” Dallas Lawrence, Telly’s chief strategy officer, told The Verge. “And if it ever stops being the right match, we’ll pick it up at no cost.”

The first time my TV arrived, the FedEx delivery driver marveled at its size. But he was immediately suspicious when I said it was a free TV. Just minutes after wheeling it up my driveway, he returned to my door after doing some research on his phone, saying he heard the TV might take my data. “I know,” I said, “That’s basically part of the deal.”

When I finally got the TV out of its massive box, lugged it onto my stand, and turned it on, I realized the screen was completely cracked. I was more disappointed by having to repackage the entire thing than by having to wait a little longer to use it. Besides the physical labor involved, the return process was fairly simple. I emailed Telly, filled out a return form, and my new TV was on its way.

Once I actually got to use the TV, I found that the picture quality on Telly’s 4K HDR display is decent, though some low-light scenes can appear grainy. The six-driver soundbar has great audio, and the TV has customizable RGB backlighting. Telly runs a custom version of Android that’s preloaded with only a few apps you might recognize, like Spotify and Zoom, so you’ll need to use the included Google TV dongle to gain access to Netflix, Disney Plus, Max, and other streaming apps.

Allison Fiori’s AI avatar is the centerpiece of Telly’s homepage. Photo by Emma Roth / The Verge

The TV defaults to Telly’s home screen each time you turn it on. That’s where you’ll find the lovely Telly Today news segment, which resets every time you turn off the TV or navigate away from the home screen — meaning you have to hear all the same news stories, in the same order. Fiori often goes over celebrity news, showcases the latest trailers, and shares lighthearted viral videos, like a dog showing a piglet how to use its doggy door.

Lawrence confirmed to The Verge that Telly cast Fiori “specifically for this role.” He added, “We work closely with Allison to shape the experience, blending her on-screen presence with cutting-edge AI technology.” During my time with the TV, I found that a secondary host, which appears to be the AI likeness of a comedian named Vinny Fasline, shows up to highlight viral posts from around the internet or do trivia.

In between these segments, Telly shows a series of ads, which you can conveniently mute by pressing the Telly remote’s “A” button. The mix of ads isn’t always relevant or fresh – I once watched three of the same ads in Spanish (which I don’t speak) in a row.

Telly’s built-in camera comes with a privacy shutter. Photo by Emma Roth / The Verge

The TV also comes with a built-in camera with a privacy shutter and a microphone. The company’s terms of service state that it “may collect information about the audio and video content you watch, the channels you view, and the duration of your viewing sessions,” as well as detect the “physical presence of you and any other individuals using the TV at any given time.” This isn’t exactly comforting, and I found myself becoming paranoid that my viewing habits, conversations, and even footage from the built-in camera would somehow get directly in front of Telly employees.

Telly only opens the privacy shutter on its camera when you select an app that uses it, like Zoom. While trying out the built-in video conferencing app, I found that Telly’s camera is probably about as good as the webcam on my 2020 MacBook Air — meaning it’s a bit grainy but not distractingly so. I barely got to test Telly’s microphone, though; it cut off just moments after I started testing it. When I tried again at a later date, Telly’s microphone just emitted a buzzing sound.

The TV is quite tall. Photo by Emma Roth / The Verge

In addition to holding meetings, you can use Zoom to set up watch parties with people on other devices, whether it’s another Telly TV, smartphone, or laptop. You can use the feature to watch a show or movie on the upper screen, while seeing a video feed of your friends or family members on the secondary display. This is pretty neat, but checking out Zoom quickly made me realize how unwieldy it can be to navigate between Telly’s dual screens. It took me several minutes — and lots of button mashing — to select the “Leave Call” button on the opposite display. Oh, and Telly still displays ads on the bottom screen while you’re in meetings, too.

Telly also uses its camera for a preloaded fitness app, called Gofa, which uses Xbox Kinect-style motion tracking during workouts, along with a set of random games, like Flappy Bird and Wheel of Fortune. Some games, like Whack-a-Mole, use the TV’s camera as you, well, furiously whack moles as they appear on your screen. Most of these games are pretty corny, but I don’t really mind them as a big Kinect fan back in the day.

Another interesting use case for the secondary display is having it function as a playback bar while using the Live One music streaming app, allowing you to continue using the upper display. Unfortunately, you can’t do the same with the Spotify app, as it occupies the entire main screen once you link your account and start playing music.

All of these features point to big ideas for the future of Telly, and I commend the company for trying something far different than your typical TV experience. It’s great that you can get a completely free TV with a bunch of features out of the box, like a soundbar, RGB lighting, and a camera. But the continuous ads and software snags made me realize: TVs are worth paying for.

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Humus walking around
Product Reviews

I jumped into the management god game Sintopia, only to have all my devil workers go on strike because I spent too much money on punishing sinners

by admin



Despite my love for management sims and all my best intentions when playing them, something always ends up going wrong. The real game isn’t to see how long I can keep the charade up, but how much I can manage to get done within the relatively short window of peace before everything goes to Hell.

The fact that Sintopia takes place in Hell half the time probably should have warned me about how well my antics would go, but I didn’t take the hint. Instead, I started my new job as manager of Hell and overlord of the humus, a sentient population of chickpeas.

(Image credit: Team 17)

Sintopia is kind of like two games in one. The overworld plays like a god game that has you casting spells to influence the humus. They go about their daily business with pretty limited intervention from you, farming crops, cutting down trees, electing a monarch to rule over them, and exploring the map to find new treasures and expand their village.


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I did spend a little bit of time helping them, like using a wind spell to blow away vicious animals that would attack hunting parties or ringing bells outside their homes at night to stop them from overpopulating the map. But if you asked the jumus, they probably would have a different, more violent story to tell, as to make money in Sintopia, you need to process souls, and to get souls to process, you need to kill humus.

The flipside of Sintopia is a management game located down in the belly of Hell. Here, you process the dead humus’ souls, squeeze all the sins that they’ve built up in the overworld out of them for cash and then send them on their way to be reincarnated in the overworld.

(Image credit: Team 17)

Your sin processing plant, like most management games, starts simple: Just build a couple of roads and buildings to help you extract all the humus’ sins. There are also basic buildings which drain the humus of their sins, earning you cash as it does so.

But these functions extract minimal profit out of the process. If you want to maximise your cash, you’ll need to start researching and investing in Sin Punishment Specialists. You can unlock rooms dedicated to each of the seven deadly sins: lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride, and gluttony.

I lacked the one thing they really wanted: a good wage and a nice work environment.

These will unlock buildings that you can place and send humus to if they have a particularly high meter for a specific sin. It’ll completely deplete their sins and give you more cash so you can build more infrastructure, like breakrooms for your demon workers, and give your employees raises or just pay them a fair wage. Something I may have forgotten to do:In my haste and greed, I got carried away with killing humus to fuel Hell’s production lines and exploiting the environment to build more money-making rooms, and forgot about looking after my employees.

I built them a breakroom, put up a few inspirational posters, and even set up a happy balloon demon to motivate them, but I lacked the one thing they really wanted: a good wage and a nice work environment.

Image 1 of 5

(Image credit: Team 17)(Image credit: Team 17)(Image credit: Team 17)(Image credit: Team 17)(Image credit: Team 17)

Lewis was the first demon worker to go on strike. I pushed him aside, kicking the ungrateful worker into some lava and opting to hire someone else for less money. But the peace didn’t last long, as after a while every single demon worker went on strike, seizing the means of production and stopping the cash flow.

Armed with the knowledge that my actions actually have consequences, I started a new save, with an eagle eye at all times on my employees’ wages and happiness. Luckily, this time things turned out better as I slowly built up production alongside my valued staff in Hell and the chosen monarch of the humus, Tiberius Snakenelly, who inspired his people to work hard and increase productivity in the overworld.

Even after all of these antics, I feel as if I’ve only scratched the surface of Sintopia. There’s so much room to perfect Hell’s production lines with intricate layouts, like using sorting gates that section particular humus into specific roads, so you can create the most efficient layout possible.

Then there’s everything that can play out in the overworld, like killing kings who don’t inspire their subordinates, fighting off rogue groups, and having to deal with an end-of-the-world type scenario. If you fail to squeeze all the sins out of a humus, their sin meter will reach 100% and this will turn them into a demon who will set up shop in the overworld and periodically launch attacks on your humus population. I haven’t got to this point yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time before it happens.



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The protagonist of Hollow Knight Silksong, Hornet, looks up at a crowd of bugs suspended from the ceiling in web
Gaming Gear

I spent all weekend playing Hollow Knight Silksong and I’m totally enthralled, but nothing could completely live up to the hype after so many years

by admin



Up front: Silksong is obviously a good videogame.

I’ve played it for around 15 hours in the last four days, and all the while I’ve watched online communities grapple with it, most of whom seem to have progressed further than me. I’ve spent at least half as many hours reading about Silksong these past few days as I have playing it. And honestly, under the circumstances—the media didn’t get a head start here—that feels like the best way to go about playing and thinking about this curious game, which will likely delight or disappoint depending on your attitude going in.

I really like it so far, but there are some things that annoy me about it, and I don’t think it lives up to the hype through no fault of its own.


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I’m still not completely sure why Hollow Knight got as big as it did. I totally agree that it’s a great videogame and an outstanding metroidvania. Few games in this genre trust and reward the curiosity of the player as much as Hollow Knight did, and Silksong is no different in this regard.

But this doesn’t sufficiently explain its popularity. Maybe it’s because Team Cherry’s melancholy and quietly eccentric world is, in subtle ways, pretty different to anything we’ve explored before in this genre. It’s simultaneously cosy and forbidding, nasty and cute. Neither Hollow Knight or Silksong are fantasy metroidvanias, nor gothic ones, nor sci-fi ones, and that’s unusual. Most games adhere to the dictates of popular genres so strictly that when something like Hollow Knight comes along—something that doesn’t so much invent a new orthodoxy as it does artfully blur the distinctions between well-trodden ones—it can feel like a revelation. More curiously, this world of strange bugs, upright vermin, proud parasites, doesn’t feel aligned with any industry zeitgeist at all. (But nor did other mega popular indies Peak, Phasmophobia, or Among Us. I’m detecting a pattern.)

(Image credit: Team Cherry)

Which might be why Hollow Knight got as big as it did, aside from the prosaic truth that it’s fun. It’s also part of the reason why I think Silksong will inevitably be embraced despite not reinventing or even meaningfully advancing the genre it inhabits. Unless something massive changes between now and when the credits roll, Silksong isn’t a project in exceeding and thus rendering quaint and redundant its predecessor: it’s very much a companion piece. Despite the insurmountable hype built over years of gestation, Silksong’s ambitions are humble.

Beast mode

While Hornet is a much faster, more adept, more balletic character than her predecessor, Silksong feels surprisingly similar to Hollow Knight. The platforming is reliably tight, and Hornet is not beholden to the rules of inertia. She stops on a dime, and can be controlled mid-air. She doesn’t slide around too much and there is no sense of ever losing control over her. In the early hours at least, her downward attacks can only be executed diagonally, which actually makes no bloody sense, but the snooker-like gradations of complexity it introduces to movement and combat is edifying.

Just as I’m coming to grips with Hornet’s movement, the usual onslaught of new abilities reinvent her. Aside from the major traversal upgrades I know to expect in games like this, Silksong has a take on Hollow Knight’s Charms that makes it feel more akin to an RPG. Hornet can equip different Crests once she’s found them, and all confer some minor but important tweaks to her combat moveset. On top of that, these Crests are what you slot Silksong’s equivalent to Charms into. It’s the kind of change that will please more experimental players, as well as those who spent a lot of time mixing and matching Charms in the original.

The bosses so far don’t really rock the boat in terms of design: it’s still a matter of watching, learning and then perfecting a series of attack phases.

Silksong feels good in the hand, but it’s not why I play it. While I don’t like the Ori games as much as I love Hollow Knight, I feel like the former has a better grasp on mellifluous and expressive character movement. Team Cherry’s approach to platforming can feel quite wooden, and it lacks the flair of something like Mario or even N++. Silksong is faster than its predecessor, and the combat is much more aggressive—there are a lot of potential abilities to chain together, and many early-to-mid game bosses demand it—but Silksong, like Hollow Knight, isn’t so much about flowstate as it is about observation, patience and well-timed, precise manoeuvres.

(Image credit: Team Cherry)

One thing I love about Silksong is that its world sprawls much more than its predecessor: at the time of writing I have three known directions I can explore, and probably more that I don’t know about. I love to feel overwhelmed with options in a metroidvania. I’ve read anecdotes from players online who managed to discover far-flung regions of the map in the early hours that I haven’t seen yet by mid-game, and as a general rule, areas feel much more varied, with distinct and often surprising themes (one of my criticisms of Hollow Knight is that it’s a very dark game; Silksong is less so).

And as usual, novel approaches to exploration are often rewarded. Once, to scale an insurmountable wall, I lured a bug from a far-flung area of the room to pogo-bounce off it and mantle onto the unreachable surface. It worked. I found an NPC up there, and I’m not sure who the heck they are or how they factor into my journey, but I was rewarded for doing something that would feel akin to a bug in most other games.

There are also a lot of surprising one-off encounters—many more than in Hollow Knight—which results in a delightful tension with every new room explored. Who am I going to find in here? And what will they want from me?

(Image credit: Team Cherry)

The bosses so far don’t really rock the boat in terms of design: it’s still a matter of watching, learning and then perfecting a series of attack phases. But all I’ve beaten so far, ranging from the widely loved ol’ chum Bell Beast through to the semi-puzzly Fourth Chorus, have been gripping spectacles, at least until the fifth-or-so attempt.

Silksong isn’t harder than Hollow Knight, until it suddenly is: a particular boss (I’m actually still trying to beat it) is mercilessly kicking my arse harder than any mandatory boss in Hollow Knight, and I’m definitely less than halfway through the game. This game makes no concessions for newcomers or the impatient, and some of its quirks, like taking damage when merely touching an enemy (even if they’re stunned!) can feel unfair, or dare I say, like poor game design.

Notice bored

This is a metroidvania alright. But to see why Silksong is special you have to be alert to the minor details. In one area, tiny brown bugs carry away the corpses of enemies you’ve slain, but you’ll only notice if you stand around for a while. When the Bell Beast leaps around in their unkempt den, tiny bells bounce and ricochet off all surfaces melodiously. And while the music is as grandiose or as plaintive as the situation warrants, Silksong really excels in the area of sound design: the clink of Hornet’s sword against an impenetrable metal wall, the distant foreboding rumblings in Hunter’s March that I’m sure will probably be explained at some point (but I’ll be happy if they aren’t), give the world a sense of life and tactility that very few other studios can manage on a 2D plane.

The combat is fine, but it needs the spectacle of a boss battle, or the momentum of exploration, to carry it through.

This is an unusually lavish game, and not just by the standards of sidescrolling platformers. Spend a moment in any given room, and take in the bespoke detail applied. And then, listen to the room. The map may be bigger and there may be more bugs, but the truly impressive thing about Silksong is its sensorial detail. Get it on the biggest screen you’ve got. Make sure you’ve got the sound charging through the best speakers you have. Don’t play it at barely audible volume on a handheld: it won’t do it justice. It makes Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown look like a Roblox experience.

There are a few things that annoy me. I don’t like the sidequests, or “wishes”, so far. They usually demand Hornet to collect so-and-so amount of things, and I’d happily ignore them were it not for the fact that completing some of them have far-ranging consequences. There’s even a sidequest notice board in the main township: I hate these things in games, and it feels weirder for Hornet to be rocking around doing MMO-like sidequests than it would have done for the Knight. If I wanted this nonsense I’d wait for Borderlands 4.

(Image credit: Team Cherry)

And I’m not super fond of being suddenly trapped in a room and having to fend off waves of enemies before I can proceed. Not because these sequences are arduous—though they’re sometimes really hard—but more because they’re boring, and they happen much more frequently in Silksong than they did in Hollow Knight. The combat is fine, but it needs the spectacle of a boss battle, or the momentum of exploration, to carry it through. I can’t help but groan every time two metal gates slam shut in a square room so I can fight more of the same enemies I was just fighting in the previous hallway.

I feel like those complaints are pretty minor considering how infatuated I am with Silksong, but I do get the sense that living up to the pre-release hype is basically impossible for this gorgeous but ultimately quite orthodox platforming adventure. And I don’t mean that as a criticism: it just seems basically true to me. It’s just the nature of hype.

Then again, maybe Silksong is different. This medium’s timeworn urge towards larger scale, new and innovative game systems, and envelope-pushing graphics technology—ie, the phenomena that is basically killing the blockbuster side of town right now, at least in the west—doesn’t seem to touch Team Cherry at all, whose fortune was made via Kickstarter, and whose core team is made up of three South Australians. The truth is that they’re just really good at making their weird arse bug games. And they’re really good at making me feel like a minor genius for being curious.

And, because of the huge success of their older game, they’ve been able to spend years filling this newer one with exquisite minor detail. Just don’t come here expecting a reinvention or even something dramatically different to Hollow Knight.



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Samsung Galaxy S25 FE in hand with long green leaves behind
Product Reviews

Hands on: I spent time with the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE and it absolutely crushes the iPhone 16e in every way that matters

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Samsung Galaxy S25 FE hands-on: Price and availability

(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

To understand the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, you need to know two things. First, it’s a phone for Samsung fans, even if Samsung no longer says FE stands for Fan Edition. Second, it costs only $50 / £50 / AU$100 more than the Apple iPhone 16e, but it gives you so much more that it might be a much better value. There are still questions to be answered (Exynos, really?), but the Galaxy S25 FE makes a lot of sense.

I spent an afternoon with the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE – and the new Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra and Tab S11 tablets – and got a feel for what Samsung is cooking with this new bargain model. Actually, it’s only a bargain if you were wishing for a Galaxy S25. It still costs $649 / £649 / AU$1,099, and Samsung also sells less expensive Galaxy A-series models like the Galaxy A56.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE hands-on: Galaxy S features

(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

Why pine over a Galaxy S25 when the Galaxy A56 is within reach? First of all, the Galaxy S phones have more advanced software. They will usually get OneUI and Android updates first, and they pack more features, especially Samsung DeX, one of my favorite tricks that Samsung phones can pull.


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Enter the Galaxy S25 FE! Like the Galaxy S25, it runs the latest software, and it will even be the debut device for Samsung’s new OneUI 8 version of Android 16. If you’re a Samsung fan, you can check out the latest interface design first on the S25 FE.

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(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

Like the Galaxy S24 FE, the S25 FE can also run DeX. That means you can connect the phone to a USB-C hub with a monitor, keyboard and mouse attached and it will turn into a sort of desktop environment, with multiple windows and a real taskbar like you’d expect from a Google Chromebook.

Of course, I didn’t have a monitor and keyboard on hand during my time with the new phones; I mostly got to check out the latest OneUI 8 and the overall design. The Galaxy S25 FE is really more like a Galaxy S25 Plus. The screen is the same size, and this year so is the battery within: a 4,900 mAh cell that should provide excellent longevity. I’ll know more once I’ve reviewed the phone and Future Labs has tested it.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE hands-on: Design

(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

The Galaxy S25 FE and S25 Plus aren’t exactly the same. The FE is slightly chunkier in every direction, but not so much bigger that it’s cumbersome. It’s only a tenth of a millimeter thicker, according to Samsung. My calipers aren’t so precise.

The colors are… boring. Very, very boring. There is blue, black, blue, and white. Seriously, there are two blue colors: Icyblue and Navy blue. I remember when the FE phones used to be more colorful, but this year’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 FE is glossy black and white, and the flat S25 FE only adds dark and light shades of blue. Sigh.

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(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

The Galaxy S25 FE is a nice step down for folks who want to save money on a real Galaxy S device, and it’s also an incredible competitor stacked up against Apple’s latest bargain model, the iPhone 16e. If the iPhone 16e seemed a bit dowdy before, the Galaxy S25 FE puts to rest any question that the iPhone isn’t a serious device.

For just a bit more money, the Galaxy S25 FE gives you a much bigger display – 6.7-inches versus 6.1-inches. The Galaxy display has a higher peak brightness, and it can refresh up to 120Hz. Of course, there’s also a much larger battery inside.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE hands-on: Cameras and specs

(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

The Galaxy S25 FE gives you three cameras instead of the questionable single-camera setup on the iPhone 16e, and that includes a real telephoto zoom lens with 3X optical zoom. More importantly, the main 50MP camera uses a sensor that is much larger than the paltry sensor on the iPhone 16e’s 48MP camera.

The Galaxy S25 FE charges as fast as the Galaxy S25 Plus – up to 45W wired if you have the right charger. That’s much faster than the iPhone 16e. Usually, an iPhone has an advantage with magnetic wireless charging, but Apple oddly omitted the magnets from the bargain iPhone, so it doesn’t have the MagSafe leg up on Android phones.

The biggest letdown on the Galaxy S25 FE is the processor. It uses a Samsung Exynos 2400 chipset, which isn’t even the latest Exynos processor. I asked Samsung reps why it doesn’t use the Exynos 2500, but they didn’t have a substantive answer.

There’s a big difference between the Exynos 2400 in the Galaxy S25 FE and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset in the Galaxy S25. Even the newer Exynos 2500 doesn’t come close to measuring up. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is more than 50% faster than the Exynos 2400, based on single core test results in Future Labs benchmark testing.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: The Exynos question

(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

In battery testing, a phone like the Galaxy S25 Edge with the Snapdragon inside lasted much longer than a phone like the Galaxy Z Flip 7 with an Exynos 2500 inside, even though the S25 Edge has a smaller battery.

The difference between the Apple A18 chipset in the iPhone 16e and the Exynos 2400 in the Galaxy S25 FE is even more stark. In our benchmark tests, the iPhone completely blows away the Exynos in every test – including single- and multi-core processing, graphics, and real-world tasks.

Does that mean the iPhone 16e will be better for gaming and other processor-intensive tasks than the Galaxy S25 FE? Maybe, but I’ll need to spend more time with the phone to compare it against the iPhone’s performance head-to-head. I’m sure Samsung’s phone will be able to run the latest games, but I may need to dial down graphics settings to achieve the highest frame rate and take advantage of the 120Hz display.

I’ll know more soon once I’ve had more time with this phone, but it still feels like Samsung is making the Galaxy S25 FE for its biggest fans. The phone gets the latest OneUI interface and all of Samsung’s best software features. It has a big display and more cameras than the competition. It’s even more colorful – though that’s not a big win when the competition is literally black and white.

(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

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Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Price Comparison



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