The more things change... Doom: The Dark Ages wants to be more like the original Doom Preview: A more grounded game than Doom Eternal in more ways than one. Kyle Orland Jan 23, 2025 2:00 pm | 29 Who's ready top rip and tear? Credit: Bethesda Softworks Who's ready top rip and tear? Credit: Bethesda Softworks Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe modern Doom games have been a master class in reviving a beloved retro gaming series. Both 2016's Doom and 2020's Doom Eternal paid homage to both the look and feel of the original Doom titles without being slavishly devoted to older gameplay conventions that can feel dated decades later.Yet by the end of Doom Eternal, you could feel the modernized gameplay system threatening to burst at the seams a bit. Managing your limited ammo, health, and armor resources in Eternal meant expertly juggling a bewildering array of chainsaws, flamethrowers, grenades, and melee-based staggers into powerful, pre-animated "glory kills." That was all on top of the frequent weapon-switching needed to take advantage of the weaknesses of the varied enemies surrounding you and the double-jump-and-dash movement system that required expert use of all three dimensions.Something had to give. So for Doom: The Dark Ages, the team at id Software has committed to a more streamlined, back-to-basics system that limits complexity while maintaining the same overall difficulty level. That means a "fewer strings on the guitar" approach to controls that narrows almost every action down to just three context-sensitive buttons, as the developers discussed in a hands-off virtual preview session attended by Ars Technica.Simpler, not easierIn figuring out how to re-simplify the modern Doom formula, id Software Creative Designer Hugo Martin said he found himself going back to the '90s Doom games for inspiration more than any others. "The original Doom, and why it has stood the test of timeis it's one of the most accessible FPS single-player campaigns ever made," he said. "When it comes to combat, it's really incredibly streamlined, and that's why it's fun to this day."Flattening the controls was key to that return to old-school Doom accessibility, the developers said. In The Dark Ages, that starts with the standard weapon trigger and melee buttons, though now you can pre-select which of three different melee weapons will be activated by that single input. That shieldsaw in your left hand can do a lot with just a single button press. Credit: Bethesda Softworks That shieldsaw in your left hand can do a lot with just a single button press. Credit: Bethesda Softworks Then there's the shieldsaw, a round buckler with a revved-up chainsaw edge that's ever-present on your left forearm. The shieldsaw is controlled with a single context-sensitive button that changes functions depending on your specific situation. That means pressing the same button will block and parry melee attacks, deflect enemy projectiles (stunning them in the process), throw the saw for a ranged attack, activate a "shield bash" for a grappling-hook style lunge towards the thrown shield, and more.The idea, Martin said, is for the controls to feel intuitive enough that "when we pressure the player, they're not reaching for buttons they're not familiar with." But making the controls simpler doesn't make the game easier overall, he said. On the contrary, Martin argued that "when you streamline your control scheme, you can actually make things harder.""Some people said Doom Eternal was too hard," Martin continued. "I think it was too complex. The complexity of the control scheme led to unnecessary difficulties. You want to be fighting the demons, not the controls."The developers said they want The Dark Ages to recapture the feeling from the original Doom of being "an easy game to get into, harder to master... really accessible but very challenging." Narrowing the control options helps lead to a game that "feels more like classic Doom than any game we've made up to this point," Martin said. Demons come in many sizes. Credit: Bethesda Softworks Demons come in many sizes. Credit: Bethesda Softworks And when it comes to managing that difficulty, The Dark Ages also promises an array of sliders for more precise and flexible tuning of specific elements like enemy speed, weapon damage, and the timing window for parries. These can be adjusted down for players who are new to shooters or cranked way up for an experience that goes beyond the usual "Ultra Nightmare" ceiling.This kind of difficulty tuning was previously limited to arcane console commands, id Studio Director Marty Stratton told us, but is now being given to all players for the first time. "When you can dial up game speed and then dial up difficulty for the parry windows, change the damage done to you... you can create a very challenging experience," he said.Feet on the groundAnother big part of recapturing that OG Doom simplicity is returning to "a more grounded slayer" compared to the aerial focus of Eternal. "There weren't a lot of places to go after Eternal," Stratton said, referring to the high-flying gameplay focus in the last Doom game. "We couldn't go more vertical. [It was] about as intense as you could get... [and] we don't want to repeat ourselves."In place of Doom Eternal's "jump and shoot" gameplay loop, The Dark Ages focuses on more of a "stand and fight" mentality, the developers said. If Doom Eternal was like flying a fighter jet, then The Dark Ages is more like controlling a tank, they added by way of analogy. Less fighter jet, more tank Credit: Bethesda Softworks Less fighter jet, more tank Credit: Bethesda Softworks That means a "flatter" game space, where the old-fashioned "strafe-to-aim" strategies work more effectively than in recent Doom games, with less need to be constantly floating through the air. The developers say they're returning to the slower projectile speeds of the original Doom games, too, allowing players to more easily weave between them in a sort of first-person take on a shmup pattern. At the same time, your own projectile weapons tend toward the medium to short range, the developers said, encouraging you to take the fight close to the enemies.While staggering enemies to set up instant Glory Kills is still a core part of The Dark Ages, the developers said the system has been redesigned to avoid taking control away from the player for extended, repetitive canned animations. The new Glory Kill system allows for instant, physics-based attacks that can be activated from any angle without interrupting the gameplay flow.The more things changeThe Dark Ages developers also promised a more open design, where the usual more linear corridors are interspersed with larger playspaces that let you decide which direction to go and which objective to pursue in what order. And the standard shooting action will be broken up into specific sections where you control a 30-story mech or fly a powerful dragon. *Fleetwood Mac voice* You can go your own way... Credit: Bethesda Softworks *Fleetwood Mac voice* You can go your own way... Credit: Bethesda Softworks But the core game will still include the requisite raft of secret areas and hidden nooks to discover, the developers promised. This time around, though, those secrets are more directly tied to your power progression rather than just being collectible in-game trinkets, the developers said.It's all in service of pushing toward a game that feels "new but familiar," Martin said. The Dark Ages is still about the same sense of exploration and power that all good Doom games capture. But Martin said the development team is comfortable experimenting with what that specific sense of power is, "especially if the change you make brings it closer to classic Doom."But "I want to play a Doom game," he added. "We don't [want to] change so much that it's not a Doom game.Doom: The Dark Ages is scheduled to hit Windows, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on May 15.Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming EditorKyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 29 Comments

Thousands of Capital One customers recently experienced the fallout of a multi-day outage. Customers could not access online banking services and faced delays in receiving direct-deposited paychecks, The New York Times reported.Capital One attributed the outage to a technical issue with a third-party vendor, according to a Jan. 16 post on X.The third-party vendor in question? Fidelity Information Services (FIS), a financial technology company. On Jan. 19, Capital One posted that all customer account functionality was restored.Capital One was one of several banks impacted by the FIS system outage.Whether via malicious actors executing ransomware attacks or unintentional mistakes, third-party outages can have widespread ripple effects. We can see that here with the FIS outage and thousands of banking customers. Last year, we saw impact on a global scale with the CrowdStrike and Microsoft outage.In a time when most companies rely on third parties to operate, this kind of risk isnt going anywhere. What can enterprise leaders learn from the Capital One outage as they assess the ongoing third-party risk their organizations face?The OutageFIS attributed the outage to a local area power loss and a hardware failure, according to a company statement.Related:The company did not share more details regarding the nature of the outage, but it does raise questions about the testing and backups it has in place.There should be testing done. There should be the right tools in place with backups, Randolph Barr, CISO at Cequence Security, an API security company, tells InformationWeek. Surprising that there was a power outage that caused a disruption in their customers environments.When an outage like this happens, who gets the blame depends on who you ask. FIS attributes the outage to power loss and hardware failure. Its customers are likely to place blame on FIS. For consumers, their relationship is with their bank.A Capital One consumer they don't know who FIS is and they don't care, says Jason Rebholz, vice president, cyber risk officer at insurance company Travelers. At the end of the day, your customers are going to hold you accountable. They don't care about the details.Regardless of the ultimate cause of the outage, the impacted companies -- FIS, Capital One, and other impacted banks -- must manage the fallout.Evaluating Third-Party Relationships and Managing RiskThe interconnected nature of business and the supply chain is unlikely to change anytime soon. If anything, it will continue to grow more complex as companies look for partners in AI and machine learning. That means the possibility of outages and breaches, related to third parties isnt going anywhere either. Most organizations (98%) have a third party that has been breached in their supply chains, according to SecurityScorecard.Related:How can enterprise leaders evaluate their relationships with third-party vendors to better understand and manage that risk?Review contracts. A major outage is always a reminder for enterprise leaders to consider their third-party contracts. What kind of service level agreements (SLAs) are in place? What uptime guarantee does a vendor offer?The larger the company, typically, the more power it possesses to negotiate on these terms. If I were to look at small-, medium-sized companies, they don't have that much flexibility working with larger organizations. But when you're a large fintech company or banking company -- Capital One being a large one -- they have a lot more influence over the contracts and working closely with their vendors, says Barr.Conduct regular assessments. A businesss security is only as good as its vendors security and business continuity plans. What steps does a third party take to protect its operations, and by extension its customers operations?Related:Start off with classifying your vendors based on the criticality [to] your business, says Rebholz. The bigger impact a vendor outage would have on your business, the more critical it is.Regularly conduct assessments of that vendors security and business continuity practices.Evaluate vendor scale. As companies grow, leaders need to consider their third-party vendors ability to keep up. As [businesses] grow , they have to reevaluate every single one of [their third parties] to make sure that they can scale right along with them, says Barr.Businesses can manage those third-party relationships and diversify their supply chains to create more fail-safes, but that doesnt mean that outages or breaches wont happen.There are always these edge cases that pop up no reasonable person [who] would assume that all of these things are going to happen together, says Rebholz.When the perfect storm hits, whether its a power outage and hardware failure or something else, enterprise leaders need to be ready.You still have a lot of work that you should be doing on your side to make sure you plan for the inevitable failure or security incident at your critical vendors, Rebholz points out.Insurance can play an important role in that business continuity planning process. What kind of coverage does an enterprise have, and is it enough?The cyber insurance business is going strong; annual premiums are expected to hit approximately $23 billion by the end of 2026, according to S&P Global. But enterprise leaders need to examine the details of any policy they have or are thinking about buying.A lot of cyber insurance policies are very much geared towards malicious events, cyberattacks that type of stuff, and don't cover the accidental, Scott Kannry, CEO and cofounder of cybersecurity company Axio, points out.Risk quantification can help enterprise leaders determine the type of insurance coverage they need and the amount. What is the risk of a third-party vendor outage? How big is the potential financial loss? Does my policy cover third-party outages, accidental and caused by cyberattack?The FIS outage and its impact on Capital One and other customers is not the last incident of this nature the market willsee.We need to learn from a lot of these incidents, and we need to remind ourselves on a regular basis that this can happen to anybody, says Barr. Therefore, we need to make sure we step up our game in assessing these vendors.

South American megafauna, from giant sloths to camel-like creatures, survived thousands of years longer than we thought, challenging the idea that they were hunted to extinction by humans

Life would have been particularly hot and dry if dinosaurs really did emerge near the equatorMark Witton/The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, LondonDinosaurs may have first evolved close to the equator, not in the far south of the southern hemisphere as previously thought. A modelling study suggests they originated in a region that covers what is now the Amazon rainforest, Congo basin and Sahara desert.When you consider the gaps in the fossil record and the evolutionary tree of dinosaurs, it could very likely be a centre point for where dinosaurs originated, says Joel Heath at University College London. AdvertisementDinosaurs evolved some time during the Triassic Period, which ran from 252 to 201 million years ago, but Heath says there is pretty huge uncertainty about where and when. The oldest known fossils of these animals are about 230 million years old, but they are distinct enough to suggest that dinosaurs had already existed for a few million years. There must have been a lot going on in terms of dinosaur evolution, but we just dont have the fossils, he says.At this time, Earth looked very different. All the continents were joined into a single supercontinent called Pangaea, which was shaped like a C with its middle straddling the equator. South America and Africa were in the southern hemisphere segment of this, where they fitted together like jigsaw pieces. The earliest known dinosaurs are from southern parts of those two continents, in places such as modern Argentina and Zimbabwe so this was thought to be their point of origin.To learn more, Heath and his colleagues built computer models to work backwards in time from the oldest known dinosaurs to the origin of the group. They created several dozen versions, to take into account uncertainties such as gaps in the fossil record, possible geographic barriers and ongoing doubts over how the earliest dinosaurs were related to each other. The latest science news delivered to your inbox, every day.Sign up to newsletterMost of these simulations concluded that dinosaurs first appeared near the equator, with just a minority supporting the southerly origin.Palaeontologists have tended to assume that dinosaurs couldnt have originated near the equator, says Heath, partly because there are no early dinosaur fossils from that region. Whats more, it was a challenging place to live. It was very, very dry and very hot, he says. The dinosaurs were thought to have not been able to survive in those sorts of conditions.However, most of the models say otherwise. Its suggesting things that we didnt actually think were possible in the past, says Heath.Instead, the lack of early dinosaur fossils from near the equator may have a more prosaic explanation. Palaeontologists have tended to dig in North America and Europe, and more latterly China. There are lots of areas in the globe that are quite neglected, says Heath. He adds that geologists havent found many rocks of the right age in the regions relevant to the studys findings that they can excavate. They might not be exposed in a way that we can easily study them.However, a piece of evidence in support of Heaths idea has recently emerged. On 8 January, researchers led by David Lovelace at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported that they had found the oldest known dinosaur from the northern part of Pangaea. They discovered a species that is new to science called Ahvaytum bahndooiveche, a sauropodomorph related to long-necked dinosaurs like Diplodocus that evolved later. The team found it in the rocks of the Popo Agie Formation in Wyoming, dated to 230 million years ago.If dinosaurs were already in the north and south of Pangaea that long ago, the equatorial middle cant have been closed off to them, says Heath. They have to have been crossing that region.Journal reference:Current Biology DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.053Topics:dinosaurs

MIT Technology Reviews Whats Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of themhere. Jan Liphardt teaches bioengineering at Stanford, but to many strangers in Los Altos, California, he is a peculiar man they see walking a four-legged robotic dog down the street. Liphardt has been experimenting with building and modifying robots for years, and when he brings his dog out in public, he generally gets one of three reactions. Young children want to have one, their parents are creeped out, and baby boomers try to ignore it. "Theyll quickly walk by, he says, like, What kind of dumb new stuff is going on here? In the many conversations Ive had about robots, Ive also found that most people tend to fall into these three camps, though I dont see such a neat age division. Some are upbeat and vocally hopeful that a future is just around the corner in which machines can expertly handle much of what is currently done by humans, from cooking to surgery. Others are scared: of job losses, injuries, and whatever problems may come up as we try to live side by side. The final camp, which I think is the largest, is just unimpressed. Weve been sold lots of promises that robots will transform society ever since the first robotic arm was installed on an assembly line at a General Motors plant in New Jersey in 1961. Few of those promises have panned out so far. But this year, theres reason to think that even those staunchly in the bored camp will be intrigued by whats happening in the robot races. Heres a glimpse at what to keep an eye on. Humanoids are put to the test The race to build humanoid robots is motivated by the idea that the world is set up for the human form, and that automating that form could mean a seismic shift for robotics. It is led by some particularly outspoken and optimistic entrepreneurs, including Brett Adcock, the founder of Figure AI, a company making such robots thats valued at more than $2.6 billion (its begun testing its robots with BMW). Adcock recently told Time, Eventually, physical labor will be optional. Elon Musk, whose company Tesla is building a version called Optimus, has said humanoid robots will create a future where there is no poverty. A robotics company called Eliza Wakes Up is taking preorders for a $420,000 humanoid called, yes, Eliza. In June 2024, Agility Robotics sent a fleet of its Digit humanoid robots to GXO Logistics, which moves products for companies ranging from Nike to Nestl. The humanoids can handle most tasks that involve picking things up and moving them somewhere else, like unloading pallets or putting boxes on a conveyor. There have been hiccups: Highly polished concrete floors can cause robots to slip at first, and buildings need good Wi-Fi coverage for the robots to keep functioning. But charging is a bigger issue. Agilitys current version of Digit, with a 39-pound battery, can run for two to four hours before it needs to charge for one hour, so swapping out the robots for fresh ones is a common task on each shift. If there are a small number of charging docks installed, the robots can theoretically charge by shuffling among the docks themselves overnight when some facilities arent running, but moving around on their own can set off a buildings security system. Its a problem, says CTO Melonee Wise. Wise is cautious about whether humanoids will be widely adopted in workplaces. Ive always been a pessimist, she says. Thats because getting robots to work well in a lab is one thing, but integrating them into a bustling warehouse full of people and forklifts moving goods on tight deadlines is another task entirely. If 2024 was the year of unsettling humanoid product launch videos, this year we will see those humanoids put to the test, and well find out whether theyll be as productive for paying customers as promised. Now that Agilitys robots have been deployed in fast-paced customer facilities, its clear that small problems can really add up. Then there are issues with how robots and humans share spaces. In the GXO facility the two work in completely separate areas, Wise says, but there are cases where, for example, a human worker might accidentally leave something obstructing a charging station. That means Agilitys robots cant return to the dock to charge, so they need to alert a human employee to move the obstruction out of the way, slowing operations down. Its often said that robots dont call out sick or need health care. But this year, as fleets of humanoids arrive on the job, well begin to find out the limitations they do have. Learning from imagination The way we teach robots how to do things is changing rapidly. It used to be necessary to break their tasks down into steps with specifically coded instructions, but now, thanks to AI, those instructions can be gleaned from observation. Just as ChatGPT was taught to write through exposure to trillions of sentences rather than by explicitly learning the rules of grammar, robots are learning through videos and demonstrations. That poses a big question: Where do you get all these videos and demonstrations for robots to learn from? Nvidia, the worlds most valuable company, has long aimed to meet that need with simulated worlds, drawing on its roots in the video-game industry. It creates worlds in which roboticists can expose digital replicas of their robots to new environments to learn. A self-driving car can drive millions of virtual miles, or a factory robot can learn how to navigate in different lighting conditions. In December, the company went a step further, releasing what its calling a world foundation model. Called Cosmos, the model has learned from 20 million hours of videothe equivalent of watching YouTube nonstop since Rome was at war with Carthagethat can be used to generate synthetic training data. Heres an example of how this model could help in practice. Imagine you run a robotics company that wants to build a humanoid that cleans up hospitals. You can start building this robots brain with a model from Nvidia, which will give it a basic understanding of physics and how the world works, but then you need to help it figure out the specifics of how hospitals work. You could go out and take videos and images of the insides of hospitals, or pay people to wear sensors and cameras while they go about their work there. But those are expensive to create and time consuming, so you can only do a limited number of them, says Rev Lebaredian, vice president of simulation technologies at Nvidia. Cosmos can instead take a handful of those examples and create a three-dimensional simulation of a hospital. It will then start making changesdifferent floor colors, different sizes of hospital bedsand create slightly different environments. Youll multiply that data that you captured in the real world millions of times, Lebaredian says. In the process, the model will be fine-tuned to work well in that specific hospital setting. Its sort of like learning both from your experiences in the real world and from your own imagination (stipulating that your imagination is still bound by the rules of physics). Teaching robots through AI and simulations isnt new, but its going to become much cheaper and more powerful in the years to come. A smarter brain gets a smarter body Plenty of progress in robotics has to do with improving the way a robot senses and plans what to doits brain, in other words. Those advancements can often happen faster than those that improve a robots body, which determine how well a robot can move through the physical world, especially in environments that are more chaotic and unpredictable than controlled assembly lines. The military has always been keen on changing that and expanding the boundaries of whats physically possible. The US Navy has been testing machines from a company called Gecko Robotics that can navigate up vertical walls (using magnets) to do things like infrastructure inspections, checking for cracks, flaws, and bad welding on aircraft carriers. There are also investments being made for the battlefield. While nimble and affordable drones have reshaped rural battlefields in Ukraine, new efforts are underway to bring those drone capabilities indoors. The defense manufacturer Xtend received an $8.8 million contract from the Pentagon in December 2024 for its drones, which can navigate in confined indoor spaces and urban environments. These so-called loitering munitions are one-way attack drones carrying explosives that detonate on impact. These systems are designed to overcome challenges like confined spaces, unpredictable layouts, and GPS-denied zones, says Rubi Liani, cofounder and CTO at Xtend. Deliveries to the Pentagon should begin in the first few months of this year. Another initiativesparked in part by the Replicator project, the Pentagons plan to spend more than $1 billion on small unmanned vehiclesaims to develop more autonomously controlled submarines and surface vehicles. This is particularly of interest as the Department of Defense focuses increasingly on the possibility of a future conflict in the Pacific between China and Taiwan. In such a conflict, the drones that have dominated the war in Ukraine would serve little use because battles would be waged almost entirely at sea, where small aerial drones would be limited by their range. Instead, undersea drones would play a larger role. All these changes, taken together, point toward a future where robots are more flexible in how they learn, where they work, and how they move. Jan Liphardt from Stanford thinks the next frontier of this transformation will hinge on the ability to instruct robots through speech. Large language models ability to understand and generate text has already made them a sort of translator between Liphardt and his robot. We can take one of our quadrupeds and we can tell it, Hey, youre a dog, and the thing wants to sniff you and tries to bark, he says. Then we do one word changeYoure a cat. Then the thing meows and, you know, runs away from dogs. And we havent changed a single line of code. Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the robotics company Eliza Wakes Up has ties to a16z.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's order ending birthright citizenship.The order was challenged by multiple lawsuits, claiming it violated the 14th Amendment.In temporarily halting the order, the Seattle judge called it "blatantly unconstitutional."A federal judge in Seattle temporarily halted President Donald Trump's controversial executive order denying automatic citizenship for anyone born on US soil, calling the move to end birthright citizenship "blatantly unconstitutional.""I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that is a constitutional order," US District Judge John Coughenour told the Trump administration's attorneys after hearing arguments Thursday morning, according to multiple news outlets in the courtroom. "It boggles my mind.""I've been on the bench for over four decades, I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is," the judge added.The ruling was made in a case brought by four states Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon. The case is among at least five lawsuits filed this week challenging Trump's birthright citizenship order on the grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.In the judge's ruling granting a 14-day temporary restraining order, Coughenour wrote, "There is a strong likelihood that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of their claims that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and Immigration and Nationality Act."On Tuesday, attorneys general from a total of 22 states and two cities across the country filed two separate lawsuits in a bid to block the order. A hearing has not yet been held in the first suit, which 18 states and the top law enforcement officers of Washington, DC, and San Francisco had joined.The lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon argued that the president "has no authority to amend the Constitution or supersede the Citizenship Clause's grant of citizenship to individuals born in the United States. Nor is he empowered by any other constitutional provision or law to determine who shall or shall not be granted United States citizenship at birth.""United States citizens are entitled to a broad array of rights and benefits as a result of their citizenship," the lawsuit said. "Withholding citizenship or stripping individuals of their citizenship will result in an immediate and irreparable harm to those individuals and to the Plaintiff States."Trump's order targeting birthright citizenship, titled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," was signed shortly after Trump was sworn into office for a second presidential term on Monday. It was scheduled to take effect 30 days after its signing.Birthright citizenship is a policy that automatically gives citizenship to anyone born in the US or US territories. Under Trump's executive order, federal agencies would be barred from issuing any documents granting citizenship to US-born children whose parents live in the country illegally, or cases in which the mother was lawfully in the country temporarily such as a student or tourist but the father is neither a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.The ACLU also brought a lawsuit on Monday that said at least 150,000 children would be affected.Other immigration executive orders Trump signed after he was sworn in included declaring a national emergency, sending the military to the US-Mexico border, shutting down the CBP One app from which immigrants seeking asylum could submit information, and restricting federal funding to sanctuary cities which have limited cooperation with agents working to deport immigrants in the US illegally.

OpenAI unveiled Operator, its first AI agent, for ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the US.It can complete tasks autonomously, like booking reservations or buying groceries.The agent is powered by a new model built in GPT-4o called CUA.Experts predicted that 2025 would be the year AI agents go mainstream, and OpenAI is delivering on that forecast.On Thursday, OpenAI unveiled Operator, a system that can use a web browser to do everything from booking travel reservations to buying products.While chatbots like OpenAI's popular ChatGPT use generative AI to respond to queries, Operator is an agent that performs tasks autonomously.Operator will be available Thursday in the United States for ChatGPT Pro users, a $200 monthly plan that gives users access to its latest models, including o1. In the coming months, it will also be made available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, OpenAI's $20 monthly subscription tier, and users in other countries.During a livestream announcing Operator on Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called the release an "early research preview," adding that it will be refined over the coming months. He said OpenAI will also have more agents to launch in the months ahead.The interface is similar to ChatGPT, in which users simply prompt Operator with a request, like "book a dinner reservation at 7 p.m." Users can select a specific website through which they want to process the request, like OpenTable in the case of a restaurant reservation, or simply sending the request through a search engine like Google. Operator summarizes its reasoning process in a sidebar so users can quickly identify any step where it might make a mistake, which OpenAI says it's still prone to do.Operator is powered by CUA, a new model built on GPT-4o, Reiichiro Nakano, a member of the company's technical staff, said in the live stream. "It's trained to use and control a computer in the same way humans can, by just looking at the screen and using a mouse and keyboard to control it," he said. The model bypasses the need for APIs, mechanisms that allow software components to communicate with each other, and "unlocks a whole new range of software we can use that was previously inaccessible," Nakano said.He added that the model removes "one more bottleneck in our path towards AGI."In a benchmark comparing how AI agents navigate common operating systems, Operator scored 38.1% compared to 72.4% for humans. In another benchmark comparing how AI agents navigate common websites, Operator scored 58.1% compared to 78.2% for humans.

Ninja Gaiden 4 by makers of Bayonetta out in 2025 Ninja Gaiden 2 Black out nowGameCentralPublished January 23, 2025 7:48pmUpdated January 23, 2025 7:48pm Why have one new Ninja Gaiden game when you can have three? (Xbox Game Studios)The mystery game in the Xbox Developer Direct was not quite such a mystery after all, as its revealed to be Ninja Gaiden 4 for Xbox and PS5.Despite Microsoft making a promise of a surprise new game reveal, during its Developer Direct on Thursday evening, the rumours quickly narrowed down what it was to either an Ecco The Dolphin reboot or a new Ninja Gaiden.Perhaps unsurprisingly, its the latter which turned out to be right, although the annoucement that Ninja Gaiden 4 will be a collaboration between series creator Team Ninja and Bayonetta and NieR:Automata developer PlatinumGames was a bit of a shock.The game will be published by Xbox Game Studios, not Team Ninja and franchise owner Koei Tecmo, but it will be released on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC (and, were willing to bet, Nintendo Switch 2) this autumn.Although the third person action is very much within Platinums area of expertise they had previously vowed to stop working on games where they dont own the IP. Considering the trouble the developer seems to be in at the moment, with no new games in some time and a number of high profile staff exits, its not hard to imagine why they backtracked on that.The brain drain has left Platinum a little short on big name directors though and Ninja Gaiden 4 producer and director Yuji Nakao has never directed a game of this size before, with his most significant credit so far being one of four producers on Bayonetta 3.Nevertheless, Ninja Gaiden 4 does look like vintage Platinum, with the developers emphasising the speed of the action and what looks like a complex combat and parry system.Theres also lots of platform-like traversal going on, with wall-running, swinging on a grappling hook, and grinding along rails.Although series regular Ryu Hayabusa is in the game, and is implied to be playable at some point, the protagonist is new character Yakumo from the rival Raven clan, who can use one of two different styles of combat.Ever since the reboot in 2004, Ninja Gaiden became one of the few Japanese-made franchises to be closely associated with Xbox, so its not hard to see why Microsoft signed up to publish this new entry. Although Tomonobu Itagaki, who was responsible for the reboot, is not involved, as he left Team Ninja some time ago to set up his own studio.More TrendingItagaki was producer and director on the 2008 reboot sequel though and a remaster of that, made in Unreal Engine 5 and called Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, was also announced during the Developer Direct. Surprisingly, its out now for 39.99 on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.The problem with that is that the remaster looks arguably better than Ninja Gaiden 4, whose visuals seem more abstract, with a more distant camera. The latter probably means it plays better but its a bit awkward seeing the two next to each other.This year is the 30th anniversary of Team Ninja and theyre really going all out to engineer a comeback for Ninja Gaiden, which hasnt had a new game in over a decade now.In fact, theres also a third game thats already been announced: a 2D title called Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, which is by the developers of indie title Blasphemous. Its good to have Ninja Gaiden back (Xbox Game Studios)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

Does Doom really need a story? (Bethesda)The third entry in the Doom reboot series is out soon but will the controversial changes to its design make it better or worse than its predecessors?Appropriately enough, it seems an eternity since Doom Eternal was released. It has been five years, but it was also one of the last games we attended a preview for before the pandemic came along and, amongst other things, distorted everyones perception of time. It wouldnt have been so bad but Doom: The Dark Ages was only officially announced in June and thered been little in the way of rumours before that.That was a concern, because MachineGames intended Wolfenstein reboot trilogy still hasnt got a final chapter, but thankfully Doom has, even though its technically a prequel. It will be one of the centrepieces of the Xbox Developer Direct on Thursday evening, but we got to see the footage early and take part in a brief online Q&A with developer id Software.The release date, which was meant to be a key reveal has already been leaked (almost certainly by others watching the same preview as us) but while its nice to know that its out relatively soon, on May 15, the most important news is that it looks great and seems to be doing some things significantly different to the original.We didnt get to try it out ourselves but were willing to take it on faith that The Dark Ages plays as well as the previous two games. The 2016 reboot had some of the best first person action of last generation but it did run out of steam well before the end. Doom Eternal was a more substantial experience, that made clear efforts to address the flaws of its predecessor, even if that also wasnt perfect.In terms of combat, it pretty much was though, with both games having the ingenious idea that you gain ammo, health, and other resources from killing enemies. Youre not just fighting the legions of Hell to get to your objective, youre doing it to replenish your ammo, granting purpose and reward to every kill without having to turn the game into a role-player.This is all still the case for The Dark Ages, but developer id Software is keen to emphasise that the feel of the combat has changed in at least some ways. Your main character (known only as Doom Slayer although old school fans will know him better as Doomguy) is now described as an iron tank, with his appearance in Eternal likened instead to a fighter jet.Although the developers deny it, this seems to be a reaction to Eternals extensive platforming sequences. These were rightly criticised for almost being harder than the combat, which was galling given it was never really a part of the original 90s games.There is still jumping in The Dark Ages but Doom Slayer is now purposefully less acrobatic, although not necessarily any slower. The developers describe it as a move from jump and shoot to stand and fight a marketing phrase they manage to squeeze into the conversation multiple times. But from what weve seen (and you have presumably now too, by the time the embargo elapses on this article) were all for it.The change in approach is supported by a major rethink for melee combat, which was only a minor element in the previous games. Now though youve got an iron flail, a spiked mace, and an electrifying gauntlet, each of which seems to generate different resources and/or be more useful against certain enemies.Each weapon has its own combos and upgrades, and theres a new, more flexible, glory kill system of finishing moves. The most versatile new weapon though seems to be the sword shield which is basically Captain Americas shield but with chainsaw blades going round the edge of it. It has just as little regard for the laws of physics as Caps shield when thrown but can also be used close up to fight and parry. The dragon bits look really fun (Bethesda)Naturally, there are also lots of new guns, including a nailgun that fires giant bolts into demons and pins them to the wall. In keeping with the tank aspirations, the developers also revealed that you can now aim by strafing, which is how things used to work in the old 90s games. As fun as the gunplay has been in the last two games its mechanically very different to the originals, but The Dark Ages seems to be an attempt to get things back to the series gameplay roots.Theres plenty of brand new features as well though, with the opportunity to control a 30 storey mech and beat giant demons to death with its metal fists. Theres also the chance to fly a cybernetic dragon, in sequences that seem to be inspired by Panzer Dragoon with the developer claiming that both turn up multiple times and are not just one-off gimmicks.They were a bit vaguer as to whether the game is open world or not but reading between the lines it seems that while some sections will still be linear there will be some that are a Doom sandbox, with lots of hidden secrets and what was described as the largest play-space ever in a Doom game.There was also a reference to dungeon-like mines although that wasnt expanded upon, so whether that means a randomly-generated element were not sure, but there certainly seems to be a lot of side content for those that want it. This is the main bad guy (Bethesda)What there wont be is any multiplayer, but thats fine with us as its an unnecessary distraction nowadays and wasnt even the most memorable part of the old games, back when they coined the term deathmatch.Other elements, like the flamethrower from the previous game, will be removed, with a lot of slightly nervous talk about the action and controls being simplified and there now being fewer strings on the guitar, in terms of how many buttons are used.The developers are clearly worried that fans will accuse the game of being dumbed down, but theres no doubting the originals were very complex for a supposedly straightforward shooter.The devs insist the game isnt any easier and that instead the streamlined controls and systems allow players to do more with the mechanics than was previously possible. Without playing the game, we cant tell if thats true, but id are clearly worried about a backlash from fans.The one thing that does worry us though is the unwarranted new emphasis on plot and more cut scenes than the previous games. More than once the developer compared The Dark Ages to a summer movie blockbuster, with references to a wider cast of characters including a more articulate main villain. But the storytelling in Eternal was one of its weakest elements and doubling down on that seems like a bad idea.More TrendingApart from anything we long ago lost the thread of what was supposed to be going on and the weird sci-fi style plot, with angelic (but not actually) beings and increasingly complex background lore, already strayed too far away from the Satanic imagery and blunt simplicity of the original.According to id Software, the story is now the core pillar of the game, which sounds more like a threat than a promise, but we think theyre just saying that to try and attract people that were put off by the originals emphasis on complex and unusual gunplay. That was the whole appeal for everyone else though, so we can only hope that an equitable balance has been found.From just looking at the game it seems just as fun as ever, with a lot of welcome new elements, but well have to wait until we get a chance to play it before we know whether its brutish charms have been dulled or not. Were optimistic that they havent though and that hopefully this will end up being the best of the trilogy and a hell of a good game in its own right.Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PCPublisher: BethesdaDeveloper: id SoftwareRelease Date: 15th May 2025 This is the giant Atlas mech you get to drive (Bethesda)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

Body horror is having a moment thanks to The Substance, a movie thats not dissimilar to Sasha Rainbows new Shudder release Grafted. But the New Zealand-set tale also draws on elements that go back to genre king David Cronenbergs foundational works, including The Flyand wraps them in a story that peppers in Mean Girls and even a little Barbie, examining a worst-case scenario in girl world. Grafted begins with a flashback that establishes the unusually strong bond between a girl named Wei and her scientist fatheror make that mad scientist father, since his single-minded pursuit of a cure for the unsightly facial birthmark that both he and his daughter have has pushed him into making some highly questionable choices. In that first scene, he meets a tragic and repulsive end before her frightened young eyes, and though you might think thatd teach her a lesson about being responsible in the lab, it most certainly does not. A few years in the future, Wei (now played by Joyena Sun) leaves China, where she overhears a relative saying shes earned a reputation for being a monster, for Auckland, where a full-ride college scholarship and a free place to live at her aunts house await. A fresh start sounds like just the ticket for the brilliant but socially awkward studentshes agonizingly self-conscious about her appearancebut she immediately has a hard time fitting in, especially since her cousin Angela (3 Body Problems Jess Hong) is constantly rolling her eyes at how lame she is. One of Angelas biggest cruelties is disrespecting the altar Wei uses to pay tribute to her beloved father, a part of their shared Chinese heritage that Angela couldnt be less interested in embracing. Matt Grace/Shudder Before long, the girls sleazy science professor (Jared Turner) zeroes in on Wei, imagining that her fathers old research notebookwhich she clings to like a sacred textcontains the kind of big discovery thatll restore his fading academic reputation. While there is indeed a breakthrough in its pages, as Grafted soon reveals, its nothing thats going to make the world a better place, much less a more beautiful place as Wei fervently hopes. Grafteds first big plot twist presents itself fairly early in the film; we wont spoil any specifics, but its so startling and happens so quickly it might make you wonder where the story can possibly go from there. Things can and do get exponentially worse for Wei, but she also enjoys a few precious moments of surreal joy, testing out new identities for herself when shes briefly freed from the self-perceived ugliness thats entrapped her entire life.While a lot of Grafted is there to make you recoil at its dripping, oozing bad medicine, it also spends time digging into the intricacies of relationships between friends and frenemies, particularly among young women. Sun and Hongas well as Eden Hart as Eve, Angelas Margot Robbie lookalike bestiemake the social tensions feel just as high-stakes as the increasingly gruesome secret Wei is having a harder and harder time hiding. That the young women drift through life mostly unsupervised (Angelas mother is perpetually gone on work trips; her estranged dad is just a voice on the phone) escalates the spiral of chaos that begins to encircle them. Matt Grace/Shudder Thats further enhanced by Grafteds production design, which blends gory crimes in the dark with the neon pink hues of Wei and Angelas housewhere the mood of unease is echoed in the unfinished renovations that clutter its exterior. The film also makes some creative stylistic choices, conveying the anxiety of receiving a bad-news email or text with a quick jigsaw puzzle of editsand hits on the perfect ambient anxiety trigger by giving Angela a small dog that yaps non-stop. It also crescendoes to a finale thats as surprising as it is well-earned, as well as gross as hell.Directed and co-written by New Zealand filmmaker Sasha Rainbow, Grafted begins streaming on Shudder Friday, January 24. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, whats next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.