An AI filter on TikTok has been the subject of criticism, generating its own subset of response videos on the platform.

March 21, 20256 min readMath Reveals the Formula for a Hollywood BlockbusterMost movies follow one of six emotional arcs. Which one sells the most tickets?By Manon Bischoff edited by Daisy Yuhas bernardbodo/Getty ImagesWhat was the last movie you saw in theaters? I rarely go to the movies anymore, partly because I prefer TV seriesparticularly action shows with spies (recommendations welcome!). But I do go to the movies for real blockbusters, such as the Dune films. I have to admit, seeing an epic story on the big screen is still a special experience.In 2020 cinema-going plummeted amid the COVID pandemic. In the years since, attendance has been on the rise in many parts of the world but is still below prepandemic levels. Inflation, the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and a shift towards prestigious TV series may all play a part in these trends. The film industry is therefore under more pressure than ever to attract people to movie theaters. Math might be able to help.In 2020 British data scientist Ganna Pogrebna and her colleagues published a paper that analyzed the revenue, expenditure and popularity ratings of more than 6,000 different films. The findings mapped out story lines across movies and linked those narrative types with audience approval and money made.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Storytelling: From Aristotle to HollywoodThe researchers study was based on an earlier analysis of literary works by researchers from the University of Vermont and University of Adelaide in Australia. Both studies built on the premise that the vast majority of stories can be mapped onto just a handful of narrative arcs.This idea has been around for some time. Some 2,300 years ago, the polymath Aristotle was already thinking about the construction of stories and how they can move audiences. And in the 20th century, Kurt Vonnegut examined the emotional progression of well-known tales by charting out the sadness or joy each story conveyed from beginning to end.Inspired by Vonneguts story shapes, the University of Vermont and University of Adelaide team fed 1,327 stories from Project Gutenbergs fiction collection to an algorithm and identified six dominant emotional arcs across narratives (spoilers for classic movies and books ahead):Rags to RichesManon Bischoff/Spektrum der Wissenschaft, restyled by Amanda MontaezThese stories start with a negative situation and a protagonist who must work their way out of it over time. A classic film example is Groundhog Day, in which the main character finds himself in the strange predicament of reliving the same day over and over, and his circumstances improve as he learns more and more from his situation.Tragedy (or Riches to Rags)Manon Bischoff/Spektrum der Wissenschaft, restyled by Amanda MontaezThis is the reverse arc. In tragedies, things starts positively and end negatively. Think of Romeo and Juliet: the couple are happy in their love at the beginning, but by the end, both protagonists are dead.Man in a HoleManon Bischoff/Spektrum der Wissenschaft, restyled by Amanda MontaezIn these stories, the protagonist is doing well, and then things take a negative turn, but by the end they are often in a more favorable situation than at the beginning. A classic example is The Godfather. The Corleone crime family is at the pinnacle of power at the start of the movie, but then the head of the family is seriously injured and his eldest son is murdered. The youngest son, the protagonist, then gains an unparalleled amount of power when he takes over the role of leader and is made the new godfather.IcarusManon Bischoff/Spektrum der Wissenschaft, restyled by Amanda MontaezThis arc inverts the Man in a Hole storyline. Think of Leonardo DiCaprios character in Titanic: a poor man falls in love on a glamorous adventure but perishes of hypothermia at the end. The eponymous character of The Great Gatsby also follows what starts like a Rags to Riches success story and concludes with his murder.CinderellaManon Bischoff/Spektrum der Wissenschaft, restyled by Amanda MontaezCinderella stories begin with a bad situation that initially improves for the protagonist, then hits an emotional descent but concludes with a happily ever after. Think of Babe, the little piglet from the eponymous movie who struggles to find his place on the farm but turns things around when he begins learning to herd sheep. Unfortunately, he then gets put in a dangerous situation while defending the flock. Happily, by the storys end, everything works out, and Babe wins a herding competition.OedipusManon Bischoff/Spektrum der Wissenschaft, restyled by Amanda MontaezThe emotional arc of Oedipus is the reverse of Cinderella. Things start well, but then theres a stroke of bad luck. The protagonist picks themselves up again only to ultimately end up in a bad situation. Examples of characters with these arcs include the doomed protagonists of Frankenstein, Moby Dick or Hamlet.Pogrebnas team wanted to find out whether feature films also follow these six emotional progressions and, if so, which structure pays off the most. The researchers downloaded the English subtitles of 6,174 films and then analyzed themsentence by sentencefor their emotional content. They assigned each word a score based on sentiment: 1 for a negative, 0 for neutral and +1 for positive. Then the researchers assigned each sentence an emotional value based on the words and scaled the sentence values to fall between 1 and +1. In order to compare films of different lengths, they processed the data such that each story boiled down to 100 individual data points.To group the narratives, the researchers needed a way to measure the distance between the emotional arcs of any two movies. According to the researchers, the difference between two arcs of tension with the respective sets of data points X and Y can be calculated as follows:With that equation, the researchers were able to compare the difference between the emotional trajectories of two films at any time point (t) in the narrative. Because the absolute value in the square root is squared, the sign does not play a role in the comparison; it is therefore irrelevant whether one curve runs above or below the otheronly their distance from each other matters.Using this measure, the experts were able to group the films with similar arcs. In that way, they confirmed that all of the movies they studied fell into one of the six emotional arcs that the earlier study had identified.Interestingly, movie genre often correlates with a storys emotional progression, they found. For example, horror films usually have a tragedy structure, whereas comedies follow Man in a Hole or Cinderella narratives. Biographies are often Rags to Riches, and thrillers tend to have a Man in a Hole structure.Which Films Are Most Successful?Pogrebnas team then collected estimated production and income data from a film industry data website called The Numbers, along with film ratings from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).First, the experts examined the domestic revenue generated by each filmthis was the only information available for all works studied. The Man in a Hole category performed best, grossing an average of $37.48 million, compared with $33.63 million in the second most successful category, Cinderella.Amanda MontaezPeople seem to go to the movies more for films in which the heroes suffer but ultimately receive happy endings. Intriguingly, the much simpler Rags to Riches arc generated the least revenue on average.But maybe the big winners were simply the most expensive films? The answer to that question is nuanced. The team found no correlation between budget and success for Man in a Hole stories. These films apparently play big regardless of dollars spent or genre.Tragedies, however, generate less money unless they have particularly high production costs (in the region of $100 million or more). This may explain the financial success of large historical dramas such as The Last Samurai or survival epics like Life of Pi, Pogrebnas team wrote in the paper.Which Films Are the Most Popular?When the experts looked at user ratings on IMDb, a different picture emerged:Amanda MontaezOn a scale of 1 to 10, with one being least favorable and 10 being most favorable, films with a Man in a Hole plot performed 0.19 points worse than Rags to Riches stories. In fact, ranking the film categories by rating forms a list that is almost the opposite of the result obtained when ranking by revenues.One reason the data are at odds could be that Man in a Hole tales draw more viewers and generally receive more ratings overalland IMDb users are more likely to leave a negative review than a positive one. But the Metascore on IMDba score from review aggregator Metacritic that is based on a weighted average of critics reviews of a filmechoes the user reviews for this story category. The Man in a Hole emotional trajectory does not produce the most liked movies, but generates the most talked about movies, the researchers wrote.Meanwhile tragedies fare best in reviews from critics, who seem to favor serious films rather than happy endings.With this information, the film industry can make data-driven decisions. To attract as many people as possible to the movie theater, filmmakers can produce more movies with a Man in a Hole setup. For critical acclaim, heart-tugging tragedies remain the best. But they should keep in mind that the audience still loves the simple upward promise of a rags-to-riches journey.

March 21, 20255 min readThe Science behind Tariffs and How They WorkPresident Donald Trump is threatening steep tariffs on virtually all imports. Heres what that means and what economics research suggests would be the impactBy Meghan Bartels edited by Jeanna BrynerContainer port, Shenzhen, China. Yinwei Liu/Getty ImagesConfusion over tariffs has largely shaped the first months of President Donald Trumps second term. He has repeatedly announced 25 percent tariffs on imports from U.S. neighbors and allies Canada and Mexico, then temporarily delayed and reduced them. Trump has also targeted China, and here he has been less lenient: in February he implemented a 10 percent tariff, and this month he doubled that. He also raised the possibility that steep tariffs on most imports globally will be implemented in April. The results have been uncertainty in the stock market and widespread confusion about which tariffs are actually in effect at any given time.But there is also a deeper confusion about the policy: What are tariffs, really, and what do experts know about their impacts? It turns out that the verdict on effects is relatively clear: Economists know that they are very inefficient; we know that they are very bad for consumers, says Luisa Blanco, an economist at Pepperdine University.Many countries, including the U.S., have historically imposed tariffs as high as 20 percent on imports as a tactic to protect local producers, but this has generally fallen out of favor as free trade has become the global norm. The U.S., in line with peer nations such as Japan and European Union members, has maintained some small tariffs on specific goods, such as passenger cars, that nations under free-trade agreements are exempt from.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.And during his first term in the White House from 2017 until 2021, Trump implemented tariffs on solar panels, which are primarily produced in China, and on select Chinese industries, including medical and aerospace production. His successor from 2021 until January 2025, then president Joe Biden, kept most of those policies in place and even added tariffs on other China-made products, including electric vehicles and medical equipment. But Trumps favored approach involves using far higher ratesapparently less of an economic tactic than a foreign policy one.Scientific American spoke with Blanco about the science behind tariffs and the types of ripple effects these taxes can have on peoples daily lives.How do tariffs work?Conceptually, heres how economists think about trade: In an economically ideal world, every nation produces only the goods it can make most efficiently. The nation consumes what it needs of these products, then sells any surplus to other nations that dont produce these items as efficiently. The proceeds from those sales then fund imports of goods that the nation cant produce as efficiently.Its a mutually beneficial scenario that plays to each nations strengths. Both countries actually benefit by having access to more products, more goods, than if they just tried to produce everything themselves, Blanco says. This is the kind of free-trade situation fostered by pacts such as the United StatesMexico-Canada Agreement, which in July 2020 replaced the North America Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.A simple way to think about an economic market is that producers and importers are willing to sell varying amounts of a good for varying prices, and customers are willing to buy that good for a range of prices. In a free market, buyers and sellers continuously perform a sort of indirect negotiation that determines the retail value of a good.Some imported goods can cost more than domestically produced goods, but only if customers value them enough to pay more for them. (Consider a product such as Italian olive oil.) Other imported goods, such as T-shirts imported to the U.S. from China, cost less than domestic goods because the exporting company can produce them for far less than the cost of transporting those goods.A tariff interferes with this free-market scenario. Its basically a tax, but rather than a tax on a particular type of product (such as alcohol or gasoline), its a tax on importseither from one country or across the board.What is the impact of tariffs?Tariffs provide income to the government that applies them, although even after existing tariffs levied by Trump and Biden, the federal government last year collected about 30 times more revenue via individual income taxes than through tariffs.Traditionally, tariffs are meant to keep production at home. They artificially raise the price of imported products, allowing domestic manufacturers to charge higher prices without losing as many customers as they would if they raised prices without tariffs in place. That makes it easier for local producers to compete on goods that the U.S. does have a competitive advantage in producing. Even sellers not subject to a tariff can raise prices. For instance, after then president Barack Obama implemented a three-year tariff on China-made tires in 2009, tires produced domestically and imported from countries other than China became significantly more expensive as well, according to research published in 2022 in Applied Economics.And it is customers who ultimately bear the biggest burden of tariffs becauseto simplifythey can either pay the naturally higher price of the U.S.-made goods or the artificially higher price of the imported alternative; either way, the customer pays more. This result weighs on the economy, Blanco says. Tariffs actually create a deadweight loss in which the consumer loses more than the producer gains, she explains.Of course, the real marketplace is much more complicated and interconnected than what these explanations can encompass. For example, many goods have components that cross multiple borders multiple times. A product may be manufactured in the U.S. but rely on components sourced in a second country and processed in a thirdand these international journeys become even pricier when tariffs are added to the mix. There are definitely going to be huge distortions in the supply chain, Blanco says.The consequences add up. One analysis suggests that a 10 percent tariff on all international products and a 60 percent tariff on Chinese products could cut nearly $600 billion over four years from the U.S. gross domestic product, a common measurement of economic output, falling hardest in the earliest days.In addition, targeted nations, driven to protectionism by a trade partners initial move, often levy their own retaliatory tariffs. Sometimes tariffs escalate repeatedly into a trade war, like the one that has simmered between the U.S. and China since 2018. A retaliatory tariff against the U.S. can magnify the impacts of higher prices on U.S. consumers, but it can also hurt export opportunities for the nation despite being meant to protect its manufacturers.Effects can ripple through an entire economy. For example, one large-scale study that looked at tariffs implemented across 50 years in 151 countries from 1963 to 2014 found that the policies caused small increases in unemployment and inequality.Blanco particularly worries about people with lower incomes, who have the least padding in their household budgets when costs rise. These tariffs are going to be regressive taxes, she says. At the end of the day, we all have to buy groceries.

Atomfall reviewLast of the nuclear reactor whine.Image credit: Rebellion / Eurogamer Review by Tom Orry Editorial Director, Gamer Network Published on March 21, 2025 If you can get over a difficult start and fancy a lean take on the survival genre, Atomfall delivers an intriguing tale worth discovering.Not long after I'd started college I found myself accidentally walking into an ongoing lesson. I can't remember what was being taught, but I do remember the faces of 20-odd near-adults turning to look at me as I casually strolled into the room. "Can I help you?" the teacher asked safely behind the scowls. I mumbled something about being sorry like a charisma-less Hugh Grant, then backed out sheepishly wishing to never return and perhaps combust on the spot. Everyone has been in a slightly uncomfortable and perhaps aggro environment that you wanted to nope out of, so we all know the feeling. When I tell you, then, that Atomfall, a quaint-looking English-countryside-set first-person sci-fi survival adventure features the most hostile environment I've ever encountered, let it be a warning. The people here are carrying a lot worse than angry faces in this tale of a locked down community and a struggle over what to do about the mystery at the centre of it.Atomfall reviewDeveloper: RebellionPublisher: RebellionPlatform: Played on PS5 ProAvailability: Out 27th March on PC (Steam), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/SWithin the span of about 10 minutes Atomfall had both delivered a wonderful first impression and made me wonder if I was even going to be able to see the game through to its conclusion. After a brief "Who am I and why am I here?" opening inside a bunker of some sort, a now classic 'step out into the world' moment showcases the game's quite beautiful sprawling, lush green rural world, a red phone booth on a hill and a dishevelled home a little further down. A nice old man is playing a guitar. This is lovely, I think to myself. I wander a hundred metres down the road into what appears to be an abandoned mine. A group of people emerge, all with strong regional accents, and I'm dead in seconds - their northern tones don't kill me, but their guns do. I try again, hiding in some grass for a while, but ultimately I'm still dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. With a more considered (cowardly) approach I make my way through, but this is largely just sneaking around slowly before legging it through a door into a new area. The big emergence scene is old-hat these days, but when it looks great it still works brilliantly. One minute down the road is where I got my head repeatedly caved in. | Image credit: Rebellion / EurogamerTwo hours into Atomfall and I wasn't having a good time. Everything felt like a slog and progress was slow, owing to all those deaths. The game felt unfair, not challenging. To make matters more frustrating, I wasn't even sure what I was meant to be doing, let alone how I'm meant to survive these violent attacks while carrying a weapon that'd struggle to open a can of beans (even one with a ring pull lid). Rather than point you directly where to go, Atomfall uses a leads system, wherein you get some information and use it to work out what to do - "someone told me they'd heard a rumour about its location, around where I've circled on your map," rather than simply placing a marker and drawing a Google Maps-style route for you. It's not as [insert the name of a famous detective relevant to where you live] as it initially seems, but it was a lot to deal with on top of the frustrating combat encounters. Thankfully you can do something about this.Judge me all you want, but I made the decision to go against developer Rebellion's wishes, choosing to knock down the difficulty somewhat from the miserable default it recommends. There are plenty of options here to tailor the experience, but essentially you can tweak how challenging combat, survival, and exploration are independently. I dabbled a bit, in the end opting to make combat and survival far less challenging while keeping the exploration settings untouched. Honestly, it felt as if I was playing an entirely different game. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure some people might enjoy the grind, but these little alterations allowed me to finally get into an intriguing plot that manages to weave multiple disparate points together before finally asking you to make some tricky choices. I still died a lot, if you are wondering, which I think is needed for the world to feel dangerous. I just tweaked it enough to go from shouting rather rude words at the game (rhymes with DUCK WHO YOU CLUCKING DUCK!) to being miffed at being careless while sneaking up to a hidden pack passage.It's hard to talk about Atomfall without feeling like you're not painting a true picture of what it's like to play. It's at its best, I think, when you're exploring and figuring things out. Broadly, you end up doing jobs for people who know more than they are letting on about why the area is like it is, and what the deal is with the region's slightly out of character blue glowing plants. In turn this takes you all over a number of zones that are large enough to feel big without overwhelming. The world looks rather glorious at points, with rolling English countryside and imposing structures - some classic post-war defensive buildings, others more mysterious and slightly out of time, and oh, are those massive robots? There are plenty of key locations to investigate, too, often with hidden away locations to navigate, and the various main characters you interact with are full of intrigue. One faction in the game, the Druids, are hauled up in an old castle, for example, but this striking fortress hides some rather more interesting secrets if you go looking. The sense of discovery here is top notch, with every new area and person you find taking you one step closer to finding out just what's going on and why so many people are seemingly pushing you in different directions over what their ultimate solution is. Atomfall delights in its Englishness and it does so very well. The villages here look gorgeous. Everything isn't quite as lovely as it seems, though. | Image credit: Rebellion / EurogamerMelee and ranged combat play a significant part in the moment to moment gameplay, which is perfectly solid if rather unspectacular, in keeping with the grounded feel of the whole experience. I became more competent as I went on, but a key part of my strategy remained running away from angry mobs that wanted me dead - although it's worth noting that your chosen settings will determine how much hard work you can do without stopping to give your heart a chance to slow down, another mechanic that compounds the sense of tension. Crafting plays its part, with tonics, supplies, and upgrades all possible if you have the right unlocks and blueprints. Coming from Rebellion, makers of the Sniper Elite series, you might expect some gratuitous slowmotion exploding private part shots, but there's none of that here - although the rural England setting does mean you might hear someone shouting about them.Atomfall has been compared to Fallout, and I won't argue with that, although Rebellion's effort is more streamlined and focused, like you'd expect of a game set in an English village (complete with shops, church, and town hall) and its surrounding areas rather than a large US city. I saw one of the endings after 11 hours, but I expect you could spend at least double that if you want to go down different paths. Those of you keen to test yourselves and stick with the suggested difficulty settings (there's even one notch higher if you're that way inclined) are likely to take a good deal longer - good job you can pour yourself a nice calming tea in the high street bakery if things get a little too much to handle.The ending you'll get will depend on who you choose to believe over the course of the story. Atomfall has five (to my count) people trying to get you to do things their way, offering you some form of escape from this hostile world in exchange. This central storyline, who to do jobs for and ultimately side with, drives you forward, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how various threads came together and were closed off by my actions. You'll also have to determine what you are comfortable doing to make your life easier in the game even if that's bad news for certain NPCs you've met who you previously made promises to about keeping a secret (shhh, someone was murdered in the church, shhh, keep it hush hush). Some of these threads see you doing similar things, such as accessing a computer terminal, but you'll frequently have different options aligned with the key players, each of whom has nothing nice to say about any of the others.Atomfall accessibility optionsText scale, crosshair colour, Enemy and NPC colours, UI backplate opacity, NPC highlights, Traversal indicators, Enemy icons, Health bar permanence and scale, HUD scale, Mouse cursor in menus, Camera bob, Camera recoil and sway, Camera shakes, Field of view, Motion blur, Scale aim based on FOV, Full-screen effects, Auto-centre view, Automatic forward movement, Automatic traversal, Automatic firing, Aiming cues, Interaction cues, NPC sounds, Snap: Aim, Snap: Hip fire. Lovely views are a real highlight. Not seen off camera is a litter of dead people I shotgunned to the face while saying "crumbs" while role-playing as a buffoon-like Englishman. | Image credit: Rebellion / EurogamerNo doubt, Atomfall has issues with gameplay balance. If there weren't options to fine-tune the difficulty I don't think I'd be able to be very positive about what I played. On top of that, there's an awful lot of trudging around the various maps, too, with the game often sending you from one farthest point to the other, and there's no fast travel as an option. By the end I found myself guessing where I had to go next simply by looking at where the most distant point on the map was, and usually I was right. Quest design, too, is quite basic when broken down, regularly asking you to go somewhere, only to be told you can't do the thing you went there to do until you go somewhere else to find a required item, and then return. The fairly breezy story and lovely sights let Atomfall get away with most of this, and the slightly deranged Midsomer Murders Englishness of it all will help you gloss over a lot of these problems.It's rare I swing so wildly on a game as I did with Atomfall. From thinking it's a borderline dud to being keen to talk to other players about what they did and dive back in to see more, I'm now firmly in the "you should play this" camp. Atomfall is largely competent in a lot of areas rather than being unique or genre-leading, but I really enjoyed the world that Rebellion created, the duplicitous main characters, and the post-war sci-fi story. I could do with playing a game where everyone isn't giving me a proper scowl now, though. It's unnerving.A copy of Atomfall was provided for review by Rebellion.

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereFortnite Chapter 6 Season 3 is set to come out on May 2. Even though its still over six weeks away, details about the season have already been leaked. The theme has been a hot topic recently, and theres speculation about the Battle Pass design. What makes this leak even more surprising is that Season 2 isnt even halfway over yet.In this article, we will reveal everything thats been leaked about the next Fortnite season so far. However, keep in mind that these leaks havent been verified yet. While they do come from reputable leakers, Epic Games hasnt confirmed the theme of the season yet.Whats the theme of the next Fortnite season?According to several reputable leakers and insiders, the next season of the video game will have a Star Wars theme. Considering that the season is set to begin on May 2, only two days before Star Wars Day, this would be a perfect opportunity for a big collaboration. Epic and Disney have collaborated many times in the past, even bringing many iconic Star Wars characters to Fortnite.In the previous season, Night Rose mentioned that Reality Zero is a shard from far, far away, which could have been the first clue about Season 3s theme. Additionally, multiple leakers have reported that Star Wars chests will be making a comeback soon.Fortnite has many iconic characters from the Star Wars franchise. Image by VideoGamerAt the moment, Fortnite has 33 Star Wars skins, and most of them have been released to the Item Shop. If the next season does have this theme, we expect even more iconic characters, from Palpatine to General Grievous. The franchise certainly has many amazing characters to offer, so it will be interesting to see which of them come to Fortnite.As we are still far, far away from the next season, its hard to verify the validity of the leak. However, Epic will likely start teasing the season in late April, and we will find out more information by then. FortnitePlatform(s):Android, iOS, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action, Massively Multiplayer, Shooter9VideoGamerRelated TopicsFortnite Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereDelta Force: Black Hawk Down is a full cinematic campaign remake of the 2004 original available for free on PC. Releasing to mixed reviews due to its rough performance and crushing difficulty for players on their lonesome.While developer Team Jade is also working on some key performance improvements to the both the campaign and its separate multiplayer component, the studio is also working on creating an easier Solo Mode for players without friends. (Or without friends who want to play Black Hawk Down.)Delta Force Solo Mode is comingIn an interview with VideoGamer, Delta Force game design director Ricky Liao explained that the team are making balancing changes to make the game feel more fair in specific areas. However, they wont be making any difficulty levels for players to switch between.The challenge is intentional and weve designed the game to provide an immersive experience that challenges players to think tactically, Liao said. While the game is quite difficult, thats because the developer wants teams to play tacticslly and as a team, but what about single-player?In the same interview, Liao explained that a Delta Force Solo Mode is in the works for the games Black Hawk Down campaign. Instead of having single player users battle against the same co-op balanced difficulty, they will have their own difficulty options.Were introducing a solo mode, which will offer a more approachable experience for players who prefer playing alone, while maintaining the core tactical elements of the game, the game director explained.Despite the new difficulty mode, Team Jade wants to make sure that the Delta Force campaign stays difficult no matter what. Instead of making the game super easy like a CoD campaign, the team wants to make sure players have to think about their actions.Black Hawk Down isnt meant to be a fast-paced shooter, Liao said. The challenge forces players to think critically, strategize, and collaborate effectively with teammates, creating a level of tension and realism that mirrors real military operations.Delta ForcePlatform(s):Android, iOS, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):First-Person ShooterRelated TopicsSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

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Regardless of shifting political winds in the U.S., renewables are surging ahead. In a landmark moment for the American power grid, wind and solar energy together outpaced coal for the first time in 2024, according to a new report from energy think tank Ember.For decades, coal was the backbone of U.S. electricity generation, fueling factories, homes, and economic growth. But in 2024, solar and wind combined to generate 17% of the nations electricityedging out coal, which dropped to just 15%. Thats a historic low for coal in a country that once relied on it for more than half of its power. Ground-mounted solar panels. Credit: Wikimedia CommonsThe Age of Electricity ArrivesThis year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) declared that the world is officially leaving behind the Age of Coal and Oil. We are now entering the Age of Electricity. In all fairness, there is a bit of wishful thinking in that. Oil and gas in particular, but also coal, still play a huge role in global energy systems. But solar, wind, and batteries are not surging ahead. Theyre just supplementing fossil fuelsthey are replacing them.The shift is happening almost everywhere. OECD nations, including the United States and European Union, are accelerating their transition away from coal and gas. The UK, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, shut down its last coal-fired power plant. Meanwhile, wind and solar overtook fossil fuels in the European Union for the first time, generating 30% of electricity in the first half of the year, compared to fossil fuels 27%.In the U.S., wind and solar set another milestone: together, they produced more electricity than coal from January to November. Even more striking, wind power alone outperformed coal in March and April. The numbers are staggering: solar and wind supplied 90 terawatt-hours (TWh) more electricity compared to the same period last yearenough to power 9 million homes.Coal power in the OECD has halved since its peak replaced mainly by wind and solar. Credit: EmberSolar is winning, Ember chief analyst Dave Jones told The Verge. It added more generation than gas in 2024, and batteries will ensure that solar can grow more cheaply and quickly than gas.Batteries and PolicyThe problem with renewables was always energy storage: you can only generate electricity during some parts of the day, so you need ways to store it for renewables to stand on their own. Thats exactly what were witnessing now, as battery costs are plunging. The price of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which do not require expensive materials like cobalt or nickel, has fallen dramatically. In India, battery storage costs have halved in just three years, from $450 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2021 to around $200/kWh in 2024.By 2030, grid-scale battery capacity is projected to rise tenfold. This means that for every 6 MW of renewable energy added, 1 MW of battery storage will be installed. Countries are investing in battery storage at record levels. In India, 16 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of grid-scale battery storage have been tendered, with 211 megawatt-hours (MWh) already operational. In the EU, battery storage capacity doubled to 16 GW last year.As solar and wind make up a larger share of the grid, batteries will ensure a stable power supply even when the sun isnt shining or the wind isnt blowing. Of course, renewable energys rapid ascent hasnt come without obstacles. The Trump administration has attempted to stifle its growth, cutting funding, halting federal approvals for wind farms, and imposing tariffs that could raise costs for new projects. These counter productive policies have had an impact, but market forces have kept renewables marching forward, despite political headwinds.When project developers are considering which resources to deploy in the grid, they look 20, 30, 40 years down the line, Timothy Fox, a managing director at ClearView Energy Partners told The NY Times. From that perspective, its hard to envision building a coal plant today.Wind turbines. Credit: Wikimedia CommonsHowever, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 injected new life into renewables with tax credits, while state regulations pushed utilities to transition away from fossil fuels. More than 20 states, including Minnesota, North Carolina, and Nebraska, now mandate that all electricity come from clean sources by 2050 or sooner.Even some utilities, once staunch coal defenders, have started backing away. In states like Michigan and Louisiana, environmental groups successfully blocked utilities from passing coal-related costs onto customers. And in New England, coal plants have vanished entirely.A Global ShiftThe numbers from 2024 paint a clear picture: the energy transition is no longer a slow, theoretical shiftit is happening now, and it is accelerating. The world is moving toward a clean electricity system driven by solar, wind, and batteries.For the first time, entire regions are generating more electricity from renewables than fossil fuels. Storage solutions are catching up. Costs continue to plummet.The fossil fuel era is fading. The Age of Electricity has arrived.

Got T Go FastAtomfall review: a seriously swift survivalist scramble through a scenic section of Sadness IslandYou might be done with it a lot quicker than you'd anticipate, but while its got you, Atomfall is a decently good time.Image credit: VG247 Review by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on March 21, 2025 When I played a few hours of Atomfall at a preview earlier this month, the main question Rebellion's action-survival game left me with (aside from 'wheres the nearest place I can buy a vegetarian pasty to eat for tea?') was just how interesting would the bits that lay beyond what Id played be?How deep would the intrigue go, once youd really started to crack open the razor-blade covered pastry of this rough and rugged trip to a Cumbrian quarantine zone set up after a fictional variant of the real life Windscale fire?To see this content please enable targeting cookies. As it turns out, the answer is perhaps a little less deep than I would have liked. But heres the thing: I think it depends a lot on exactly who you are whether this lack of depth will be a positive or a negative. To properly rip the hastily-crafted bandage off, heres the situation. I reached the ending to my first playthrough of Atomfall after just 11 hours. That was with me pursuing a few of the main quest threads that each offer a different way to attack the ending, but not quite all of them.I was on the recommended Survivor difficulty (the second toughest the game offers), so I wasnt doing anything that might artificially shorten my run-up by potentially mismatching the general hardness of things to my already not uber-MLG abilities. I didnt have any special pre-order bonus gear or anything to help out either. Atomfalls just a game that, if youre not planning on taking many prolonged breaks from pursuing whichever main story leads youre prioritising to turn over every stone and comb through every location in the zone, doesnt have that long a runtime. If you follow the signs straight through the main objectives, you might not be in Cumberland that long. | Image credit: RebellionThats not to say that what is in the game isnt regularly intriguing, charming, or satisfying. Nor will you come out of whichever ending you opt for feeling that youve been short-changed. But this truncated runtime makes the game an interesting one to grade.Given a chance to properly settle into a build and crafting setup, I gravitated towards a general strategy of moving everywhere stealthily, then taking out most foes by sprinting up to them, dodging any shots or swings as best I could, and bonking my enemies to death with a trusty cricket bat.Once I took a perk to boost my characters melee damage, I found I could finish off most human enemies with two or three hits, and as long as I kept a steady stockpile of alcohol and cloth to craft bandages I could use whenever food and first aid kits werent plentiful, I could easily recover from most damage this strategy exposed me to.In scenarios when I didnt want to risk charging in, I used guns and a bow from a distance, with the latter and a bolt-action sniper rifle serving to whittle down enemies with a decent chunk of health from range. Meanwhile, my fourth large weapon slot held an SMG that I could save for the most brown trousers-time encounters in order not to burn through its relatively scarce and easily burned-through ammo.Towards the end, I started using one of my smaller backpack slots for a pistol I could whip out in close-quarters fights against weaker foes if I fancied. The toughest foes - giant BARD robots with flamethrowers and machine guns - I just snuck or ran like hell past, as the game very much seems to intend. On the other end of the scale, you can kick or slap swarms of rats, bats, pigeons, and leeches to death. Which is fun. I also loved getting up to a bit of metal detectoring - who wouldn't dig unearthing lunchboxes of goodies? | Image credit: RebellionThe majority of my perks, however, went into survival and conditioning. Stuff that helped toughen me up and better prepare me to fight the hostile environments you spend the vast majority of the game in. Three of these - Casterfell Woods, Skethermoor, and Slatten Dale - are open air regions of the games above-ground sandbox, and each is patrolled by its own enemy faction thatll shoot you on sight. Masked druids, rowdy-looking outlaws, and British army troops known as The Protocol, theyre all to be dealt with in whatever fashion you deem most practical as you explore each of these thematically-distinct areas that all boast a rugged beauty matching their dangerous atmospheres.Wyndham is the fourth bit of the puzzle, and its the largest of the rare safe havens that you can dip into when youre beaten down and in need of a quick reprieve from the kicking Atomfall gives you. That is, unless you mess with the Protocol soldiers whore occupying it, so its a bit less safe than you might first think. Theres some decent intrigue going on across all of these areas, a decent roster of friendly NPCs to chat to, leads to chase, and little mysteries to investigate.As you push towards the end game, however, youll find yourself spending a lot of time in The Interchange - the secretive underground bunker youll need to gradually bring back to life and gain access to different bits of in order to discover what happened at the games version of the Windscale plant to kick into effect the quarantine. Ill not delve too deeply into spoiler territory, but I will say that what you uncover feels like it pulls bits from video game apocalypses you may well have played through before. Casterfell's woodland nature enthusiasts are friendly folks. | Image credit: RebellionI was very much reminded of some elements from The Last of Us, along with Fallout: New Vegas - specifically the Dead Money DLC. None of thats an issue in a vacuum, Atomfall delivers its tale with just about enough unique flavour to keep you hooked, but I do feel like it only scratches the surface of the potential its premise exudes from a narrative perspective.The mechanic that delivers the story works well. Unless you opt for a lower difficulty that enables things like map markers and extra hints to aid exploration, Atomfalls detective-style lead system is a refreshingly stripped-back alternative to the UI-heavy quest and navigation systems youll find in most open-world games (you know the ones I mean).It meshes well with the narrative tone Rebellions gone for, which is very understated and keeps a lot of its cards close to its chest. That style of storytelling is very British, and is part of what makes Atomfall feel different from the likes of Fallout, with the latter often being more open - either in terms of just pulling back the curtain as to whats going on and why, or in acknowledging the philosophical discussion at play.In theory, both work just fine, but I do feel Atomfalls approach holds it back in places from delivering something more compelling or with a bit more depth. A lot of the lore - for lack of a better term - about The Interchange, the events of the quarantine, and the mysterious Oberon lying at the centre of it all, is delivered via notes or short conversations that often feel like they stop short of really captivating you and delivering a proper whiff of the interesting tale Atomfalls constantly teasing that its got brewing away. Yes, the Queen (RIP) is in it. | Image credit: Rebellion/VG247Ive seen four different endings to the game so far, and all of them felt a bit flat, like they were failing to or breaking off before they could conclude things in a properly satisfying fashion. There are times when Atomfalls mystery-weaving serves it well as its narrative progresses and you get some nice short-term choice in consequence, but it doesnt drop the curtain much, even when you reach the point when you feel like it should be, and the reveals you do get sometimes feel like theyre the least interestingly delivered outcome possible.It reminded me a lot of The Chinese Rooms Still Wakes the Deep in this way - well-crafted, unquestionably good fun, but with a story that feels like its probably the weakest part of the thing, either because its leaning a bit too heavily on genre tropes or holding back from actually committing to delivering on the elements that could go beyond that.Theres still a good chance youll still love it. The gameplay loop is satisfying, the environments are fun to explore, and the short runtime makes it an ideal Game Pass thing you can give a go without having to fork over 60 hours that could well get a bit stale by the end. However, I think Rebellions left what could have made Atomfall a great game rather than just a good or ok one on the table here.Its closer to puddle deep when it could be a lake or ocean given its cool premise. Or, to put it in a more Atomfall way, its a pasty that doesnt quite deliver a filling that matches how tasty the pastry looks.Atomfall launches on March 27 for PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4. It'll come to Xbox Game Pass on day one. This review was conducted on PC using a code provided by the publisher.

You Crazy DiamondOnly 1 in 4096 people are not going to be excited about Pokemon TCG Pocket's upcoming expansion, Shining RevelryIt's a shiny joke, get it? Starting March 27, we all will be able to grab a whole new set of shiny cards.Image credit: VG247 News by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on March 21, 2025 Wake up Poke-fans, a new expansion for Pokemon TCG Pocket has just been revealed! Titled "Shining Revelry", it's themed entirely around shiny Pokemon. Unlike the mainline games where your odds of getting one are 1/4096, there'll be boatloads of shinies to collect starting March 27.The trailer, which you can watch yourself below, is short but oh so sweet. In it we get a sneak peak of a few cards in typical Pokemon TCG Pocket fashion, including but not limited to a new black Charizard EX, a new Lucario EX, and even a Red trainer card. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.While we do get a nice look at some cards and all the stats and abilities attached to them, much is left hidden away. This is normal, the folks who make the trailers for Pokemon Pocket expansions love teasing us just a little bit with these reveals, but what we do see appears to flesh out various deck types. Red, for example, boosts damage done to opponent EX Pokemon. A valuable card, especially at a time when Arceus EX is still dominating the meta.In addition, the Shining Revelry expansion comes with a selection of new EX starter deck missions, which will be available one day later on March 28. These offer up a selection of new powerful cards mixed in with other new cards that compliment them. Shout out to Wugtrio EX. I've no idea if he'll be good, but he's a don Pokemon and I'll be using him in the upcoming PvP events regardless of the meta. You've gotta ride or die by your faves, folks.Are you excited for Shining Revelry? Let us know below!