Cutting corners: Microsoft introduced Windows Server Update Services in 2005 as an improvement over previous software update mechanisms, designed for Windows patch downloads and servicing. Two decades later, one of the most popular tools in the Windows enterprise ecosystem is losing features ahead of its planned, definitive demise. Microsoft already told its enterprise customers that Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) will eventually go the way of the dodo. While the service will continue to function for now, it will no longer receive development updates as the company shifts its focus to streamlined, cloud-based Windows management platforms.Recently, Microsoft reiterated that WSUS will soon lose some of its existing functionality. According to a new deprecation announcement, starting April 18, 2025, WSUS will stop synchronizing updates for Windows drivers. In on-premises environments such as those used by traditional end customers, small office/home office (SOHO) setups, and small businesses drivers will instead need to be downloaded directly from Microsoft's official Update Catalog.New dark wallpaper in Windows Server 2025However, Microsoft warns that these downloads cannot be directly imported into WSUS. Alternative methods will be required to keep drivers up-to-date outside the platform. The company strongly encourages its customers to transition to cloud-based solutions such as Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopatch. For resourceful administrators, there remains the option to integrate custom driver packages into their Windows images prior to deployment.In its original announcement regarding WSUS deprecation, Microsoft noted that only a small portion of WSUS users (34%) were still using driver synchronization. Among these, most had already implemented alternative solutions, while only 8% expressed concern about the potential impacts of deprecation. // Related StoriesMicrosoft clarifies that "deprecation" refers to the stage in a product's lifecycle when a feature is no longer actively developed. Deprecated features may be completely removed in future releases, though they should continue to work until they are no more.Judging from on Microsoft's latest announcement on the Windows Message Center, the deprecation of WSUS driver synchronization means the feature will no longer be available starting this April. This decision is part of an ongoing trend where Microsoft removes long-standing features from its software and cloud services.The extensive list of deprecated features in Windows 11 is just the tip of the iceberg. As the WSUS case clearly shows, no single customer is really safe from Microsoft's chopping block.

Dennis Quaid transforms into a notorious serial killer in the teaser trailer for Happy Face, an upcoming crime drama at Paramount+.Happy Face is inspired by the true-life story of Melissa G. Moore, played by Annaleigh Ashford. As a teenager, Moore discovered her father (Quaid) was the Happy Face serial killer. With her father behind bars, Moore changed her name to disassociate herself from her familys name that lived in infamy. Decades later, Melissa is forced to confront the incarcerated killer after an innocent man faces the death penalty for a crime her father committed.Recommended VideosEvery violent act is a rock dropped in water, Ashford says in the trailer. If you stay silent, the ripples of trauma just keep pulling everyone they touch underneath.Please enable Javascript to view this contentMoores story served as the basis of theHappy Facepodcast and her autobiography, Shattered SilenceHappy Face | Teaser Trailer | Paramount+Happy Facesensemble includes series regulars James Wolk, Tamera Tomakili, Khiyla Aynne, and Benjamin Mackey.Jennifer Cacicio (Your Honor) is the showrunner and executive producer alongside Robert and Michelle King, Liz Glotzer, Melissa G. Moore, Conal Byrne, Will Pearson, Michael Showalter, and Jordana Mollick. The Kings are the husband-and-wife creators behind several shows, includingThe Good Wife,The Good Fight, Evil, andElsbeth. Showalter directed the first episode.CBS Studios producesHappy Face in association with King Size Productions, iHeartPodcasts, and Semi-Formal Productions.Happy Facepremieres on Thursday, March 20, 2025, with two episodes on Paramount+. New episodes will be released on Thursdays, with the season finale on May 1. Season 1 will consist of eight episodes.Editors Recommendations

Table of ContentsTable of ContentsWhat is DeepSeek?What can DeepSeek do?Who can use DeepSeek?Why is DeepSeek suddenly such a big deal?A year-old startup out of China is taking the AI industry by storm after releasing a chatbot which rivals the performance of ChatGPT while using a fraction of the power, cooling, and training expense of what OpenAI, Google, and Anthropics systems demand. Heres everything you need to know about Deepseeks V3 and R1 models and why the company could fundamentally upend Americas AI ambitions.DeepSeek (technically, Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese AI startup that was originally founded as an AI lab for its parent company, High-Flyer, in April, 2023. That May, DeepSeek was spun off into its own company (with High-Flyer remaining on as an investor) and also released its DeepSeek-V2 model. V2 offered performance on par with other leading Chinese AI firms, such as ByteDance, Tencent, and Baidu, but at a much lower operating cost.Recommended VideosThe company followed up with the release of V3 in December 2024. V3 is a 671 billion-parameter model that reportedly took less than 2 months to train. Whats more, according to a recent analysis from Jeffries, DeepSeeks training cost of only US$5.6m (assuming $2/H800 hour rental cost). That is less than 10% of the cost of Metas Llama. Thats a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars that US firms like Google, Microsoft, xAI, and OpenAI have spent training their models.Related Introducing DeepSeek-V3!Biggest leap forward yet: 60 tokens/second (3x faster than V2!) Enhanced capabilities API compatibility intact Fully open-source models & papers 1/n pic.twitter.com/p1dV9gJ2Sd DeepSeek (@deepseek_ai) December 26, 2024Benchmark tests put V3s performance on par with GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. A December 2024 Op-Ed in The Hill categorized DeepSeeks success as Americas Sputnik Moment.DeepSeek released its R1-Lite-Preview model in November 2024, claiming that the new model could outperform OpenAIs o1 family of reasoning models (and do so at a fraction of the price). The company estimates that the R1 model is between 20 and 50 times less expensive to run, depending on the task, than OpenAIs o1. DeepSeek subsequently released DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-R1-Zero in January 2025. The R1 model, unlike its o1 rival, is open source, which means that any developer can use it.As such V3 and R1 have exploded in popularity since their release, with DeepSeeks V3-powered AI Assistant displacing ChatGPT at the top of the app stores. Venture capitalist Marc Andreesen, in a recent social media post, called DeepSeeks chatbotone of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs Ive ever seen and a profound gift to the world.As an open-source large language model, DeepSeeks chatbots can do essentially everything that ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude can. That includes text, audio, image, and video generation. Whats more, DeepSeeks newly released family of multimodal models, dubbed Janus Pro, reportedly outperforms DALL-E 3 as well as PixArt-alpha, Emu3-Gen, and Stable Diffusion XL, on a pair of industry benchmarks. DeepSeek-R1, rivaling o1, is specifically designed to perform complex reasoning tasks, while generating step-by-step solutions to problems and establishing logical chains of thought, where it explains its reasoning process step-by-step when solving a problem.oh boy #deepseek Alexios Mantzarlis (@mantzarlis.com) 2025-01-27T16:50:40.640ZWhat DeepSeeks products cant do is talk about Tienanmen Square. Or the Yellow Umbrella protests. Or President Xi Jinpings likeness to Winnie the Pooh. Basically, if its a subject considered verboten by the Chinese Communist Party, DeepSeeks chatbots will not address it or engage in any meaningful way.Andrew Tarantola / DeepSeek / Digital TrendsAs an open-source LLM, DeepSeeks model can be used by any developer for free. OpenAI charges $200 per month for the Pro subscription needed to access o1. DeepSeeks models are available on the web, through the companys API, and via mobile apps. You will need to sign up for a free account at the DeepSeek website in order to use it, however the company has temporarily paused new sign ups in response to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeeks services. Existing users can sign in and use the platform as normal, but theres no word yet on when new users will be able to try DeepSeek for themselves.Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2023, American AI companies have been laser-focused on building bigger, more powerful, more expansive, more power and resource-intensive large language models. Rather than seek to build more cost-effective and energy-efficient LLMs, companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and Google instead saw fit to simply brute force the technologys advancement by, in the American tradition, simply throwing absurd amounts of money and resources at the problem. In 2024 alone, xAI CEO Elon Musk was expected to personally spend upwards of $10 billion on AI initiatives. OpenAI and its partners just announced a $500 billion Project Stargate initiative that would drastically accelerate the construction of green energy utilities and AI data centers across the US. Google plans to prioritize scaling the Gemini platform throughout 2025, according to CEO Sundar Pichai, and is expected to spend billions this year in pursuit of that goal. Meta announced in mid-January that it would spend as much as $65 billion this year on AI development.DeepSeek just showed the world that none of that is actually necessary that the AI Boom which has been helping spur the American economy in recent months and which has made GPU companies like Nvidia exponentially more wealthy than they were in October 2023, may be nothing more than a sham. It also calls into question just how much of a lead the US actually has in AI, despite repeatedly banning shipments of leading-edge GPUs to China over the past year.The bottom line is the US outperformance has been driven by tech and the lead that US companies have in AI, Keith Lerner, an analyst at Truist, told CNN. The DeepSeek model rollout is leading investors to question the lead that US companies have and how much is being spent and whether that spending will lead to profits (or overspending).In short, DeepSeek just beat the American AI industry at its own game, showing that the current mantra of growth at all costs is no longer valid. DeepSeek clearly doesnt have access to as much compute as U.S. hyperscalers and somehow managed to develop a model that appears highly competitive, Srini Pajjuri, semiconductor analyst at Raymond James, told CNBC.If a Chinese startup can build an AI model that works just as well as OpenAIs latest and greatest, and do so in under two months and for less than $6 million, then what use is Sam Altman anymore?Time will tell if the DeepSeek threat is real the race is on as to what technology works and how the big Western players will respond and evolve, Michael Block, market strategist at Third Seven Capital, told CNN. Markets had gotten too complacent on the beginning of the Trump 2.0 era and may have been looking for an excuse to pull back and they got a great one here.Editors Recommendations

Better to share technology broadly, in bite-size increments, than to smother it with regulation from the start, prompted by our worst fears.

"containment breached" Alien: Earth will bring the horror home The prequel series is set a couple of years before the events of the original 1979 film, Alien. Jennifer Ouellette Jan 27, 2025 2:56 pm | 11 Credit: YouTube/FX/Hulu Credit: YouTube/FX/Hulu Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAlien: Earth, an all-new original series, premieres this summer on Hulu and with Hulu On Disney+. FX/Hulu dropped a surprise short teaser for its upcoming spinoff series, Alien: Earth, during the AFC Championship game last night. What makes it intriguing is the way it's shot entirely from a xenomorph's point of view as the creature races through a spaceship's corridor while a "containment breached!" warning repeats. The final shot said the spaceship is headed on a crash course toward Earth.The official premise is short and sweet: "When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planets greatest threat." We know very little yet about the specifics of the series, other than that it is set two years before the events of the first film, Alien (1979).It's promising that showrunner Noah Hawley has said that the style and mythology will be closer to that film, rather than Prometheus (2012) or Alien: Covenant, both of which were also prequels. In the prequels, Ridley [Scott] made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of Alien, which is supposed to take place in those movies future," he said last January. "Theres something about that that doesnt really compute for me. I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films, and so thats the choice Ive madetheres no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple Store technology is not available to me.Chandler's character is named Wendy, and apparently she has "the body of an adult and the consciousness of a child." The eminently watchable Timothy Olyphant plays her synth mentor and trainer, Kirsh, and here's hoping he brings some space cowboy vibes to the role. The cast also includes Alex Lawther as the soldier named CJ; Samuel Blenkin as a CEO named Boy Kavalier; Essie Davis as Dame Silvia; Adarsh Gouray as Slightly; Kit Young as Tootles; and Sandra Yi Sencindiver as a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. I think we can expect at least some cast members to end up as xenomorph fodder.Alien: Romulus was a welcome return to the franchise's horror roots, and Alien: Earth will bring the horror to our home planet. Theres something about seeing a Xenomorph in the wilds of Earth with your own eyes, Hawley told Deadline Hollywood in September. I cant tell you under what circumstances youll see that, but youll see it and youre going to lock your door that night.As for creature design, "What was really fun for me was to really engage with the creature, bring some of my own thoughts to the design while not touching the silhouette, because thats sacrosanct," he said. "But some of the elements as we know, whatever the host is informs what the final creature is. I just wanted to play around a little bit to make it as scary as it should be.Alien: Earth premieres on FX/Hulu this summer. Credit: FX/Hulu Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 11 Comments

What's the deal? Trump may leave TikToks algorithm under ByteDances control Everything insiders are saying about Trumps plan to save TikTok. Ashley Belanger Jan 27, 2025 2:39 pm | 2 Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIt was apparently a busy weekend for key players involved in Donald Trump's efforts to make a deal to save TikTok.Perhaps the most appealing option for ByteDance could be if Trump blessed a merger between TikTok and Perplexity AIa San Francisco-based AI search company worth about $9 billion that appears to view a TikTok video content acquisition as a path to compete with major players like Google and OpenAI.On Sunday, Perplexity AI submitted a revised merger proposal to TikTok-owner ByteDance, reviewed by CNBC, which sources told AP News included feedback from the Trump administration.If the plan is approved, Perplexity AI and TikTok US would be merged into a new entity. And once TikTok reaches an initial public offering of at least $300 billion, the US government could own up to 50 percent of that new company, CNBC reported. In the proposal, Perplexity AI suggested that a "fair price" would be "well north of $50 billion," but the final price will likely depend on how many of TikTok's existing investors decide to cash out following the merger.ByteDance has maintained a strong resistance to selling off TikTok, especially a sale including its recommendation algorithm. Not only would this option allow ByteDance to maintain a minority stake in TikTok, but it also would leave TikTok's recommendation algorithm under ByteDance's control, CNBC reported. The deal would also "allow for most of ByteDances existing investors to retain their equity stakes," CNBC reported.But ByteDance may not like one potential part of the deal. An insider source told AP News that ByteDance would be required to allow "full US board control."According to AP News, US government ownership of a large stake in TikTok would include checks to ensure the app doesn't become state controlled. The government's potential stake would apparently not grant the US voting power or a seat on the merged company's board.A source familiar with Perplexity AI's proposal confirmed to Ars that the reporting from CNBC and AP News is accurate.Trump denied Oracles involvement in talksOver the weekend, there was also a lot of speculation about Oracle's involvement in negotiations. NPR reported that two sources with direct knowledge claimed that Trump was considering "tapping software company Oracle and a group of outside investors to effectively take control of the app's global operations."That would be a seemingly bigger grab for the US than forcing ByteDance to divest only TikTok's US operations."The goal is for Oracle to effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok," one source told NPR. "ByteDance wouldn't completely go away, but it would minimize Chinese ownership."Oracle apparently met with the Trump administration on Friday and has another meeting scheduled this week to discuss Oracle buying a TikTok stake "in the tens of billions," NPR reported.But Trump has disputed that, this weekend saying that he "never" spoke to Oracle about buying TikTok, AP News reported."Numerous people are talking to me. Very substantial people," Trump said, confirming that he would only make a deal to save TikTok "if the United States benefits."All sources seemed to suggest that no deal was close to being finalized yet. Other potential Big Tech buyers include Microsoft or even possibly Elon Musk (can you imagine TikTok merged with X?). On Saturday, Trump suggested that he would likely announce his decision on TikTok's future in the next 30 days.Meanwhile, TikTok access has become spotty in the US. Google and Apple dropped TikTok from their app stores when the divest-or-ban law kicked in, partly because of the legal limbo threatening hundreds of billions in fines if Trump changes his mind about enforcement. That means ByteDance currently can't push updates to US users, and anyone who offloads TikTok or purchases a new device can't download the app in popular distribution channels."If we can save TikTok, I think it would be a good thing," Trump said.Could Trumps plan violate divest-or-ban law?The divest-or-ban law is formally called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. For months, TikTok was told in court that the law required either a sale of TikTok US operations or a US ban, but now ByteDance seems to believe there's another option to keep TikTok in the US without forcing a sale.It remains unclear if lawmakers will approve Trump's plan if it doesn't force a sale of TikTok. US Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who co-sponsored the law, issued a statement last week insisting that "ByteDance divesting remains the only real solution to protect our national security and guarantee Americans access to TikTok."Krishnamoorthi declined Ars' request to comment on whether leaked details of Trump's potential deal to save TikTok could potentially violate the divest-or-ban law. But debate will likely turn on how the law defines "qualified divestiture."Under the law, qualified divestiture could be either a "divestiture or similar transaction" that meets two conditions. First, the transaction is one that Trump "determines, through an interagency process, would result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary." Second, the deal blocks any foreign adversary-controlled entity or affiliate from interfering in TikTok US operations, "including any cooperation" with foreign adversaries "with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing."That last bit seems to suggest that lawmakers might clash with Trump over ByteDance controlling TikTok's algorithm, even if a company like Oracle or Perplexity serves as a gatekeeper to Americans' data safeguarding US national security interests.Experts told NPR that ByteDance could feasibly maintain a minority stake in TikTok US under the law, with Trump seeming to have "wide latitude to interpret" what is or is not a qualified divestiture. One congressional staffer told NPR that lawmakers might be won over if the Trump administration secured binding legal agreements "ensuring ByteDance cannot covertly manipulate the app."The US has tried to strike just such a national security agreement with ByteDance before, though, and it ended in lawmakers passing the divest-or-ban law. During the government's court battle with TikTok over the law, the government repeatedly argued that prior agreementalso known as "Project Texas," which ensured TikTok's US recommendation engine was stored in the Oracle cloud and deployed in the US by a TikTok US subsidiarywas not enough to block Chinese influence. Proposed in 2022, the agreement was abruptly ended in 2023 when the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) determined only divestiture would resolve US concerns.CFIUS did not respond to Ars' request for comment.The key problem at that point was ByteDance maintaining control of the algorithm, the government successfully argued in a case that ended in a Supreme Court victory."Even under TikToks proposed national security agreement, the source code for the recommendation engine would originate in China," the government warned.That seemingly leaves a vulnerability that any Trump deal allowing ByteDance to maintain control of the algorithm would likely have to reconcile."Under Chinese national-security laws, the Chinese government can require a China-based company to 'surrender all its data,'" the US argued. That ultimately turned TikTok into "an espionage tool" for the Chinese Communist Party.There's no telling yet if Trump's plan can set up a better version of Project Texas or convince China to sign off on a TikTok sale. Analysts have suggested that China may agree to a TikTok sale if Trump backs down on tariff threats.ByteDance did not respond to Ars' request for comment.Ashley BelangerSenior Policy ReporterAshley BelangerSenior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 2 Comments

The incoming president signed a suite of executive orders last weekYURI GRIPAS/POOL/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockIn the first week of his second term, US president Donald Trump has thrown the countrys scientific apparatus into chaos, while at the same time anointing a new tech oligarchy. With a blitz of executive orders, hes set the US on a path that will derail climate goals, biomedical research and pandemic readiness.On 20 January, the first day of his presidency, Trump declared a national energy emergency and proposed expanding fossil fuel production on federal land, including a controversial move to open Alaskas Arctic National

We followed the No. 1 ranked female eater, Miki Sudo, and her husband, Nick Wehry, as they trained for one of the last Major League Eating contests of 2024 the Norms hotcake eating championship in Las Vegas. Over the past three decades, competitive eating in America has evolved from a casual hobby into an increasingly ambitious sport. These athletes train their bodies like machines, crafting every meal and strategizing every bite to beat the competition. Major League Eating, the sport's governing body, works with sponsors to host about 70 contests annually, with up to five figures in prize money.Show more

Meta is offering creators thousands to post exclusive short-form videos on Instagram reels.The deals require creators to post a certain number of reels to Instagram each month.Read the exact terms of contracts Instagram sent creators.Instagram wants to be the first place creators go to post short-form videos.And it's attempting to do so with piles of cash.With TikTok's US future in limbo, Meta has been contacting creators and their teams with deals offering thousands of dollars in exchange for exclusive video content posted to Instagram reels. The payouts described to Business Insider ranged from $2,500 to $50,000 a month and required the content to be exclusive to Instagram for three months. The Information first reported on the program last week.BI viewed contracts and spoke with several talent managers whose clients have received these offers. The managers requested anonymity to protect business relationships. Their identities are known to BI.Typically, the deals are being sent to creators with more than 1 million followers on TikTok.Not every contract is the same. One manager told BI they couldn't see a clear pattern as to why some creators were offered more money than others.The payouts are grouped into tiers:Tier 1: $50,000 a monthTier 2: $25,000 a monthTier 3: $15,000 a monthTier 4: $5,000 a monthTier 5: $2,500 a monthHowever, even the promise of a big payday hasn't been enough to lure some TikTok creators. This underscores the challenges Meta may face in usurping TikTok's short-form dominance."To try and change consumer behavior, or at least the perceived acceptance of consumer behavior, by stemming down another platform, I just don't think is the right way of handling it," a second manager said.Instagram is offering deals worth up to $300,000 over six monthsHere's a glimpse into an offer that has been sent to several creators for a total of $300,000 over six months:Creators would be required to post new, never-before-seen short-form video content to Instagram in the form of reels.Over the course of six months, creators would post at least 10 new reels to their Instagram accounts each month.This content must be exclusive to Instagram for three months.Videos must be at least 15 seconds and no longer than three minutes.Creators must post 25% more to Instagram reels than their next largest short-form video platform.They must share two of the reels a month as an IG story.Once a day, engage with fans via comments, shares, or replies.Must post twice a month on their primary platform (TikTok or YouTube), promoting their content on Instagram and encouraging their fans to follow them on Instagram via the link in their bio.Instagram may promote the creator's content through paid ads on TikTok, Google, and potential app stores.If creators meet these requirements, they will earn $50,000 each month for the duration of the six-month deal.The second talent manager with knowledge of these deals said some of their clients turned down the offer, citing reasons like exclusivity and overall frustration with Meta. Some said posting multiple reels a day felt "cheugy," a Gen-Z term for out of touch."It's not a good deal," the second manager said. "Having to track that you're posting 25% more to reels than TikTok makes this untenable."The manager added: "Some clients are taking it because the money is good for them, and I've seen some clients pass."Here are the terms for a second offer that has been sent to several creators for a total of $90,000 over six months:Creators would be required to post new, never-before-seen short-form video content to Instagram in the form of reels.Over the course of six months, creators would post at least eight new reels to their Instagram accounts each month, totaling 48 videos.This content must be exclusive to Instagram for three months.Videos must be at least 15 seconds and no longer than three minutes.Creators must post more short-form video content overall to Instagram during this period than any other platform, such as TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, or X.If creators meet these requirements, they will earn $15,000 each month for the duration of the six-month deal.Meta is also offering bonuses to lure TikTok creatorsWord is getting around about Meta's offers in the influencer industry, two talent managers told BI."Meta is being really bullish on locking these in," said a third talent manager who has seen similar offers from Meta.This isn't the only trick Meta has up its sleeves to woo TikTok creators amid a still looming ban or sale.Meta launched a "Breakthrough Bonus" program last week. The program pays "eligible TikTok creators to help jump-start their growth on our apps," a spokesperson told BI. The program will pay up to $5,000 within a three-month period for posting reels to Instagram and Facebook.Meta declined to comment on the specifics of these deals.

The Sniper Elite series returns with this bloody side story from the French occuption where your British gun hero has to turn WW2 away from a German super weapon winTech17:47, 27 Jan 2025Sniper Elite ResistanceIf you fancy shooting Nazis in their privates this game is definitely for you.Sniper Elite: Resistance takes the tried and tested game engine from previous titles in the series and gives it a new story set in WW2.And this time its all about your very British special forces hero Capt Harry Hawker, taking to occupied France to help batter back the German invaders with your sharpshooting skills.If you played 2022s Sniper Elite 5 youll get a sense of deja vu here as this new version borrows wholesale a lot of that titles gameplay mechanisms.And the story is a well trodden formula - destroy Germanys secret new weapon that can win the war - with you taking to big open maps and trying to complete several missions to progress the story using a combination of stealth killing and sniper gunshots.For those with a bloodlust, the slow-mo camera is back which sees a particularly good long-distance shot fly through the air in cinema-style before pummelling into a baddies body.The maps are big and open, ideal for long shotsREAD MORE: Daily Star's newsletter brings you the biggest and best stories sign up todayREAD MORE: Daily Star's best games of 2024 rated from Call of Duty to multi-player that blew upThats when you get a look at the bloody insides of the victim being smashed and crushed in real time by the bullet passing through them.Great gamers will soon be using this technique to produce horrible but comic-looking scenes of skulls, hearts and private parts being blasted apart.Its one of the Sniper Elite series main selling points and it looks detailed and as gruesome as ever here on PS5.The game plays well, theres a good mix of different styles of play on-the-go.Youll find yourself with an Uncharted-like behind-the-back camera angle as you move Harry quietly around graphically lush areas packed with Nazis on patrol, trying to sneak your way past some while quietly killing off others with brutal melee takedowns.Theres wall, building and ledge climbing as you traverse levels that are well made and have plenty of height and depth to them as well as physical ground space.And then of course when you find a nice perch, its all about looking across the vast map to pick of German villains from after with your sniper gun.Its got a nice pace to it, with all-out carnage erupting sometimes when you start shooting and the Nazis pinpoint your hidey-hole and come looking for you in a gang.That often ends in death but the game has generous save points to return to so you can try an alternative way of approaching the level.One annoying thing is the lack of awareness the Nazi bot-controlled enemies have.There are times they run right past you from behind to then reposition in front of you and take pot shots. It's poor and can ruin the illusion that they're anything but cannon fodder.The graphics are good but not in the highest levels of quality for PlayStation. They feel more B-movies than blockbuster.And the voice acting is incredibly cliched.But theres plenty of replayability in the co-op and multiplayer modes on offer. And the against-the-clock propaganda challenges - which are small, repeatable levels that test the players skills in stealth, combat and sniping - are also fun.Shout out too to the returning Invasion mode, where players can invade another gamers campaign mission as an enemy sniper. That becomes a cat and mouse fight as both players can earn points by taking out their opponent.There are plenty of Nazis to killSniper Elite: Resistance is well made, and offers a strong challenge for gamers who like a slower pace to their gun games than the likes of Call of Duty.It offers nothing particularly new though and isnt top tier when it comes to both gameplay and graphics.Xbox gamers with Game Pass get access to it on day one, so well worth a try.But Playstation gamers may want to wait until a price drop before stealthily trying this one.VERDICT 3/5Article continues belowReviewed on PS5. Review code provided by the publisher.RECOMMENDED