The iPhone 16has been out for about six months, but it's never too early to speculate what Apple's next flagship device could look like. There's already been plenty of buzz about what we could see with the next iPhone, likely called the iPhone 17, from a slimmer version of the upcoming handset to -- finally -- a new screen with a higher refresh rate on baseline models.Here's what analysts and leakers are predicting about the iPhone 17 lineup, which is expected to be announced around September.A slimmer iPhoneOne of the biggest rumors surrounds a possible iPhone "Air,"a thinner version of Apple's flagship device that would replace the iPhone Plus option. It could feature a 6.6-inch screen, making it slightly smaller than the iPhone 16 Plus and iPhone 16 Pro Maxbut still bigger than the baseline model, according to analysts Jeff Pu and Ming-Chi Kuo. Similarly, it's likely the Air will be more expensive than the baseline 17, but cheaper than the Pro models -- maintaining the Plus' place in the iPhone hierarchy.To slim down a device, there will need to be hardware tradeoffs, and that may include the phone's camera. It's possible this version of the iPhone 17 would only have one main camera, Kuo speculates, doing without the ultrawide and 5x telephoto lenses that have been staples of Apple's premium iPhones for years. This would place the slim iPhone in the same camp as the $600 iPhone 16E when it comes to cameras, as that phone only has one rear lens as well. The good news, though, is that the selfie camera on the iPhone Air could get a boost; more on that later. Watch this: iPhone 17 Rumors: What Analysts Say Apple Is Doing Next 04:06 Regarding what's on the inside, the iPhone 17 Air will likely feature an A18 or A19-branded chip, Pu suggests. This would reportedly match the chip in the baseline iPhone 17. It could also include 8GB of RAM and, potentially, theApple-developed 5G modem, called the C1 chip, which debuted earlier this month on the iPhone 16E.What remains to be seen is what battery capacity could look like. A slimmer build typically means less space for the battery and, by extension, potentially a compromise on battery life. Hopefully, that's not the case here, but we'll have to see.A higher refresh rate across the boardRumor has it all models of the iPhone 17 will feature a 120Hz display, bumping the non-Pro models up from their current 60Hz refresh rate. That could be a welcome change, as the discrepancy between the Pro and non-Pro refresh rate is surprising; when Apple debuted the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus with a 60Hz display, there was a bit of an outcry from folks who expected more in 2024. This rumored update could remedy that -- and possibly bring the always-on display to the baseline model.Apple could also upgrade its Ceramic Shield display by using an antireflective material that's more scratch-resistant, MacRumors reported.Camera upgrades James Martin/CNETIt's not an iPhone release without a camera upgrade, and there have been plenty of rumors on what the camera module could look like on Apple's upcoming phones. In January, aleaked imagefrom Majin Bu on X suggested the phone could feature apill-shaped camera bar, essentially resembling what you'd find on Google'sPixel 9phone. On Sunday, Majin Bu followed up with CAD renders of what's said to be the iPhone 17 lineup, featuring horizontal camera bars, as well as larger rectangular bars on the iPhone 17 Pro models.Front Page Tech also shared iPhone 17 Pro renders in a video earlier this month, depicting a larger camera bar that maintains the lens' stacked layout. A separate video on the iPhone 17 Air shows a smaller camera bar, with one lens on the left. Time will tell if these rumors end up being reality.Another rumor is that the selfie camera on all iPhone 17 models, including the Air, will be upgraded to 24 megapixels, Pu reports. That's a decent bump from the current 12-megapixel front-facing camera on the iPhone 16 lineup, though it's important to remember that more megapixels doesn't automatically mean better photos. Still, given how much people increasingly rely on their front cameras to snap selfies and record videos for TikTok and Instagram, this is sure to be a welcome advancement.Other possible featuresThe rumors on what frames the iPhone 17 lineup will feature have gone back and forth, but Pu recently suggested the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max will all have aluminum frames. The iPhone 17 Air could be the outlier with a titanium frame, he noted.Additionally, the iPhone 17 Pro Max could have a narrower Dynamic Island, thanks to a smaller Face ID sensor. Dynamic Island on other iPhone 17 models would reportedly stay the same size, Pu has said.Last week, Kuo noted Apple will swap out Broadcom's Wi-Fi chips for in-house chips across the iPhone 17 lineup, stating this would "enhance connectivity across Apple devices." It's not yet clear what exactly this would mean, but it would be interesting if Apple's C1 chip was accompanied by its own Wi-Fi chip, too.We'll continue to update this piece as more rumors surface, so be sure to follow along. Check Out the iPhone 16 Pro Max's Cameras, Display and Colors See all photos

February 25, 2025Saying Farewell to the Gaia Mission, Which Mapped the Milky WayWe Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanSUBSCRIBE TO Science Quickly[CLIP: Theme music]Rachel Feltman: For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, Im Rachel Feltman.Youve probably heard of space telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb. Theyre famous for giving us breathtaking images of the cosmos and providing countless people around the world with very pretty phone backgrounds.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.But meanwhile a spacecraft you probably havent heard of has been busy shaping our understanding of the universe in a quieter, less glamorous way.My guest today is Lee Billings, a senior editor covering space and physics for Scientific American. Hes here to tell us why the European Space Agencys Gaia spacecraft is so importantand why, even though the Gaia mission is technically coming to a close, its scientific legacy is only just beginning.Lee, thanks so much for joining me today.Lee Billings: Rachel, it is my great pleasure once again.Feltman: [Laughs] So my understanding is that youre here today to tell us about the end of a mission that most of us don't even know how much were gonna miss. What is Gaia, to start us off?Billings: Thats right. So Gaia is a spacecraft that was launched by the European Space Agency way back in December of 2013. And it was on a mission to create the best, biggest, most accurate map of the Milky Way ever. And [it] recently stopped taking science data as of January 15. And so Im here to celebrate Gaia and tell you why Gaia is so cool and why, even though you should miss it, the best is actually still yet to come.Feltman: So tell me about how Gaia got started. What were its goals and who made it happen?Billings: The bread and butter of astronomy is looking at things in the sky, figuring out how far away they are, how bright they are, and thats how we know our place in the universe. Well, a few centuries ago we didnt actually know how far the Earth was from the sun. Where we are now, a few centuries later, is: We do, of course, know the distance between the Earth and the sun. And more importantly, we know the distances to lots and lots of stars in the sky. Pretty much any star that we can see in the sky, we have a very good sense of how far away it is and how bright it is.And its kind of the first rung of what people sometimes call the cosmic distance ladder. The way that we can say that something is x billion number of light-years away or, you know, only a few light-years away or whatever it isthe way we can do that is by starting off on this cosmic distance ladder, where the first rung is the distance to the nearest stars, and from there you have to extrapolate to other distance estimation methods, so on and so forth.Gaia was preceded in the 1980s and the 1990s by another satellite from the European Space Agency called Hipparcos. And Hipparcos was kind of like a proto-Gaia. It was doing the same thingit was trying to map the Milky Waybut it had a much smaller number of stars it was looking at. It couldnt look nearly as precisely at the motions of the stars as Gaia can. And fundamentally, thats all Gaia is really doing: its looking at how stars move in the sky. And that gives you an estimate, essentially, of how far away these things are when you measure this motion.Whats very important to remember, however, is that Gaia is not just looking at that. Unlike something like [the] Hipparcos [satellite] that preceded it, its also looking at things like the luminosities, the temperatures, the chemical compositions of lots of different objects. Its doing this for about two billion stars and other objects in and around the Milky Way. And when you put all that data together, what you get, unfortunately, isnt a beautiful picture. Its not a gorgeous picture you can hang up on your wall like a poster and say, Whoa, look at that. Thats wild. Instead, its this massive map, this massive catalog, composed of something on the order of, like, three trillion observations. And thats really fundamental and important, and you can draw all kinds of cool science from that, but its not really sexy, right? Its not going to be on the covers of magazines. And so Gaia, even though its almost like the air that astronomers breathe, as someone once told me, is also kind of a telescope or a mission that only astronomers can love.Feltman: Mm, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, Hubble and the James Webb, like, we get to see a lot of the really gorgeous payoffof course, thanks to lots of tireless work processing images from people behind the scenes. But yeah, with Gaia, there, there was just sort of less of a visual component for us, you know, rubes to appreciate.Billings: You mentioned, obviously, the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope. These other big, beautiful telescopes, they make big, beautiful images. One thing that Gaia does, by virtue of making this really great map, is: it creates kind of a coordinate system or a reference frame that these other telescopes use for pointing. So in a wayIm exaggerating a little bitbut in a way, the way that we get those pretty pictures and that we know where our telescopes are pointing in the sky is through things like Gaia. And Gaia has set the standard there, and it will be there for a long time.Feltman: So what kind of findings was Gaia responsible for?Billings: We're only about one third of the way through Gaias data. So it gathered data for about 11 years. There are five data releases in total that are planned. We are only up to Data Release 3. Data Release 4 is supposed to come sometime in 2026. Data Release 5the big kahuna, the whole enchiladais supposed to come by the end of the decade, and thats going to constitute all of Gaias observations. And thats when well really get all kinds of spectacular stuff.But already weve seen a lot of stuff. Its hard to properly encompass all the things that Gaia has done. It is such a smorgasbord. I think one of the coolest things that Gaia has shown us is in the field of whats called galactic archaeology. That means How can we look at the Milky Way today and look at the different kinds of stars and structures in it swirling around? And how can we kind of reverse engineer or trace it back in time and rewind the tape and see how it all coalesced and came together?You study things like what are called tidal streams of stars that are, that are the remnants of ripped-up smaller galaxies that merged with the Milky Way. One thing that Gaia has done is: its shown us when, for instance, the last major merger took place in the Milky Way. You can still see the fossil remnants of this torn-apart smaller galaxy that combined with the Milky Way to make the familiar galaxy we see today. We can say that this event, this last major merger, occurred about 10 billion years ago. Thats before the sun and the Earth formed, right? That just kind of blows my mind, that before we were even here, in a very concrete sense, this stuff was going on, and we can see it. We can, we can see its evidence.Some other things: I mentioned the tidal streams of stars that we can see whizzing around. Gaia has been able to track these different tidal streams and discover lots of new ones. A lot of them are arcing around whats called the halo of our Milky Way. You think of the Milky Way as, like, this flat disk with a, with a bar and a spiral, right? Well, surrounding it is this more kind of diffuse cloud that also has stars in it. Theres lots of dark matter in it, we think. And in one of these tidal streams Gaia foundthis tidal stream seemed to have a curious little kind of bite taken out of it. And the idea is that that bite that seems to have been taken out of that stream might, in fact, be evidence of a dark matter clump in the halo. So, you know, were trying to find dark matterthis mysterious substance that supposedly has gravity but doesn't otherwise interact with anything in the universe, essentiallywere trying to find it in all these lab experiments here on Earth, and they keep coming up empty. We cant find it; we cant find it. And some people say, Well, maybe dark matter doesnt exist. Well, were finding evidence from things like this tidal stream with, apparently, a Cookie Monsterstyle bite taken out of it that, in fact, you know, that might be dark matter out there. We might end up finding the clinching evidence for dark matter through this sort of observation way out there rather than finding it in our lab.Gaia has shown us a more precise architecture of parts of our Milky Way. Like, its found that theres actually this little curious warp in the disk of the Milky Way as its being perturbed by merging with another, smaller dwarf galaxy.It has measured the motion of our solar system through space around the galactic center, with respect to a reference frame of about 1.3 million far-distant quasars, which are the cores of active galaxiesbasically giant supermassive black holes that are feeding on matter and burping out lots of light and energy. And we can see these cosmic beacons across very, very, very vast spaces. And so Gaia has made this three-dimensional map of more than a million quasars, and we can track our motion against these far distant objects. Thats charting our course around the Milky Way, around the galactic center. So we orbit the center of our Milky Way, and this is showing us basically how fast that orbit is and its characteristics.Its found oodles of asteroids. Its refined the orbits for about 150,000 of them, and its turned up evidence for moonlets around hundreds of those. Its discovered a new kind of black hole. Again, all were looking at is just kind of the wobble, the back-and-forth motion of these objects in space as they move. And you can infer sometimesyou look at a star, and you see it kind of moving back and forth, like theres some unseen companion around it. And you can do the math and say, Oh, thats not a planet. In fact, that thing has a mass of about 30 times that of our own sun. So what could it be? Well, its only going to be a black hole. So weve found black holes.This is just a small smattering of things. The point is, is that Gaia is just a treasure trove. Its a cornucopia, and were going to be coming back to it for a very long time.Feltman: Yeah. So in what ways is this mission ending, and in which ways are we going to be, you know, continuing to use Gaia?Billings: So on January 15, thats when the science observations stopped. So thats when it stopped measuring the motions and other properties of objects in the sky. However, it is still alive out there. Its orbiting in a place called the [second] Earth-sun [Lagrange] point, or L2, which is a quasi-stable point about a million miles from Earthwell past the moonwhere all the gravitational forces that are around align, so that you dont really have to use much propellant to keep a spacecraft there. Thats where it is. Its going to be there for a few weeks longer, and then its going to be moved to a graveyard orbit, a heliocentric orbit. So its going to be orbiting the sun far from Earths sphere of influence, and that way, it cant get in the way of anything or cause any other problems. Itll be switched off for good in late March, March 27.And while theyre transferring it to this new orbit and decommissioning itputting it, putting it down, so to speaktheyre doing various little subtle tests, adjusting its orientation with respect to the sun and to the Earth and things like that, to basically figure out how to better control spacecraft out there, and even looking at kind of how some of its materials and hardware have responded to being in space for so long.But the really exciting stuff is going to be in these future data releases. And I think the one that I really cant get over enough is exoplanets. Whats so cool about Gaias exoplanetsagain, its via this, this method I described earlier when we were talking about finding black holesall its doing is: its looking at how a little star wobbles around laterally on the sky. The technique, its technically called astrometry, [that] is the technical name for it.And if you go right now and you look in, like, any exoplanet catalog, and you sort by detection methodthere [are] various different detection methods, we dont need to go through them all. But the point is, is that out of all of them, Im pretty sure astrometry has the least because it takes a very long time to build up enough data to really discern these wobbles and associate them with planets. So you need to have very, very, very precise measurements of the stars for a pretty long period of time, multiple years. And so, consequently, we havent been able to do that very well, and so its single digits, the number of exoplanets we know from astrometry, this, this technique. Gaia, by the time of its final data releaseIve talked to scientists who have said, conservatively, its going to give us thousands of new exoplanets.Feltman: Wow.Billings: More, more kind of middle-of-the-road estimates are tens of thousands of exoplanets, and then more optimistic estimates are 100,000 exoplanets. I mean, thats nuts. I kind of cant get over that. And so when that happens, thats going to be pretty exciting, but its also going to be overwhelming.And I think thats another aspect of this: is, it is just a firehose of data, a firehose of stuff. And that's also explaining why it takes so much time to, to get these data releases out, even though, in some sense, the data is all there in some server somewhere, right? It takes time to calibrate; it takes time to analyze. It takes time to get scrubbed of errors and cleaned up, yadda yadda yadda. So theres a lot of stuff thats going on in the background to make sure that this data will be usable in the future.Feltman: Yeah, very cool. So with Gaia retiring, you know, whats next for this field?Billings: In short, theres still a lot of great stuff to come from Gaia and the data that we already have. I mentioned earlier that there is this reference frame, essentially, that Gaia has created for us that many other telescopes are going to use to do precise pointing. But over time that will degrade because objects move, stars move, the solar system moves. So the longer we wait, the more degraded that gets, the less the precision will be. So at some point, there will be a need for another mission. And the European Space Agencyin case you cant tell, the Europeans have really taken the lead in this; theyre kind of the only game in towntheyre already planning something thats kind of like an infrared version of Gaia. Gaia uses optical light, mostly, for its observations. So if we launch something thats like an infrared Gaiaand this would probably be, like, midcentury, right, like 2045, 2050, something like thatyou can do things like peer through all the dust thats toward the center of the Milky Way, thats all in the dusty disk of our galaxy. You can pierce through that with infrared. You can see lots of other stars in the disk, through the disk, maybe even, to some degree, on the other side of things. And that will be another big leap in our understanding of the archaeology and architecture of our galaxy and will continue to give better pointing information for other telescopes.[CLIP: Theme music]Feltman: Very cool; a lot to look forward to. Lee, thanks so much for coming on to chat with us today.Billings: Rachel, thank you so much for enduring my onslaught of Gaia enthusiasm. I appreciate it.Feltman: Listeners, if you want to give Gaia some love, you can actually spot it with a backyard telescope when light bounces off of its solar panels. The European Space Agencys website can tell you where the spacecraft is in the sky at any given point to help you find it.Thats all for todays episode. Tune in on Friday for a deep dive on earworms. Why do some songs get so stuck in our heads, and how can we get them out?Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. Todays episode was reported and cohosted by Lee Billings. Emily Makowski, Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time!

Delta Force reviewCome for the battles, stay for the extraction shooting, avoid the atrocious campaign.Image credit: Eurogamer/TiMi Studios Group Review by Rick Lane Contributor Published on Feb. 26, 2025 An entertaining one-stop-shop for competitive multiplayer action, but the recently released Black Hawk Down campaign is an unpleasant war simulation in all the wrong ways.Partial as I am to a thunderous multiplayer gunfest, I've been firmly in Delta Force's camp since it was revealed in 2023. The bipartisan military junta of Battlefield and Call of Duty is in dire need of a shake-up, and the passion Team Jade seemingly has for Delta Force - a somewhat forgotten series in the West, but a cultural phenomenon in China where the studio is based - made me hopeful its take on big-budget buddy blasting would help change the tune for this particular strand of first-person shooting.Delta Force reviewDeveloper: Team JadePublisher: TiMi Studios GroupPlatform: Played on PCAvailabilty: Out now on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store), coming soon for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Android and iOSAs it turns out, Delta Force mainly adds to the noise. Its multiplayer spins on large-scale combat and squad-based extractions are meticulously designed and undeniably entertaining. But they're also structurally conservative, only making minor tweaks to otherwise familiar formulas. Team Jade makes bolder decisions in its recently released cooperative campaign, Black Hawk Down, but these ideas are underdeveloped and poorly executed, leading to a desperately unpleasant experience Delta Force may have been better off without.We'll start with this newest addition to Delta Force, which was added to the free-to-play shooter just last week. Set during the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down is supposedly a remake of the 2003 game of the same name, generally considered the strongest entry in the series developed by its original steward Novalogic. Unlike that game, however, Team Jade's campaign is also an officially licensed tie-in for Ridley Scott's 2001 film, featuring in-engine cutscenes that recite lines and mimic shots from Scott's movie, as well as actual clips from the film itself, primarily in the campaign's introduction. Such a licensing deal would have made perfect sense for Novalogic's game back in 2003, if the studio had the finances to afford it. But Ridley Scott's film is nearly 25 years old, which makes Team Jade wrapping its campaign in that particular flag a bit strange. Watch on YouTubeThis isn't the only puzzling aspect to Black Hawk Down's relationship with its source material. For some reason, Team Jade has only remade about half of the 2003 campaign. This modern Black Hawk Down kicks off the action with the mission 'Irene', the eleventh mission in Novalogic's campaign, and the point at which Delta Force and the US Rangers commence their raid to capture the advisors to General Aidid. In fairness, Team Jade's work isn't meant to be a precise replication of Novalogic's, but the fact it still only features seven missions to Novalogic's sixteen seems odd, to say the least. Moreover, these missions are extremely short. If you could run through them unhindered, Delta Force could well clock in at a shorter running time than the film. Team Jade's solution to this is twofold. First, it ensures you cannot run - standard character movement is extremely slow, while your sprint is more like a light jog. Second, it ensures you are extremely hindered. Black Hawk Down is a brutally punishing affair. Enemies come at you constantly from all angles, popping out of every aperture like clowns emerging from a car. Just a few shots can put your character down, and there are no save points whatsoever. If your squad is wiped, you must restart the mission entirely. Look, I know it's based on a real event and the politics behind the battle of Mogadishu are extremely complex, but the optics of a game in which you shoot endless waves of black people ain't great. Image credit: Eurogamer/TiMi Studios GroupNow, I don't mind the difficulty of the shooting itself, although the challenge relies far too much on rote learning of enemy placements rather than actual tactics. Nor do I mind the sluggish movement or general feel of the combat. The way it makes you feel overwhelmed feels true to Scott's depiction of the same events, and your inherent vulnerability means the tension is constantly ratcheted to maximum. Every corner you peek around feels like a roll of the dice, while watching a grenade skitter across the floor to stop dead at your feet is utterly terrifying.The problem is that the combat's general challenge is served with a heaped side-order of bullshit. If an enemy gets close to you, they can perform a melee attack which will instantly knock you down. Rocket troops are everywhere and lethally accurate in the fire, and there are several instances where their attacks are so incessant that it's nearly impossible to move forward - your world engulfed by constant smoke and tinnitus. Meanwhile, your own ordnance, which is limited mainly to grenades, don't seem to work unless enemies are already alerted to your presence, making them useless for clearing rooms. Standing in a doorway like this is risky business in Black Hawk Down. | Image credit: Eurogamer/TiMi Studios GroupLikewise, the structure of the missions often feels at odds with the game's emphasis on methodical play, usually to service either Novalogic's designs or scenes from the film. One mission, for example, sees you play as the doomed snipers defending an injured Black Hawk pilot, while another is an on-rails turret section where you drive a convoy of Humvees through a nightmare gauntlet of rocket troops. Several other missions require you to escort vehicle convoys on foot through the streets of Mogadishu, which do not stop regardless of how heavy the fighting is. If they stray too far ahead, it's game over, though in a twisted kind of mercy, they'll usually be obliterated by rocket spam long before this happens, helping you fail slightly faster.All of this makes the campaign virtually impossible to play through solo, so you'll need either a group of friends to play with, or roll the dice on Internet randoms - though even with two or three players, I still found it was a big ask. To their credit, the players I ended up bundled with were bloody marvellous on the whole, especially when you consider the campaign's communication tools are either absent or broken. Both text and voice chat seemed inoperable during missions for me, and the only other squad command available is a rudimentary target/location pointing system. This makes it difficult to work together tactically, or even perform basic tasks such as requesting ammo from other players (which is the only way you can replenish ammo during a mission, by the way). This led to me standing in front of another player and frantically reloading my gun like some military mime, until he got the message that I was running low on ammunition. God bless you, nastyMammoth and Zvedz83, you helped me through some difficult times. | Image credit: Eurogamer/TiMi Studios GroupThe only real plus here is that Black Hawk Down is free, and you can play it without investing any time or money into Delta Force's multiplayer modes. Sadly, it being free is also the best thing about this campaign. There are some half-decent moments, like the third mission where you must pick through a Mogadishu market riddled with ambushes, and the whole thing looks snazzy in Unreal Engine 5, especially the scenes where you fly over the ctiy's rooftops, rockets crisscrossing through the sky. Overall, though, it's a bust. Too short, too basic, and lacking a clear design direction.Fortunately, the competitive multiplayer is both far bigger and far better. At time of writing, Delta Force's multiplayer is split into two broad modes named Warfare and Operations. We'll address Warfare first, as its the most conventional of the two, unashamedly mimicking the structure of Battlefield in its adaptations of DICE's Rush and Conquest modes. The former sees two teams in attacking and defending roles fighting for a set sequence of hardpoints along a shifting frontline, while the latter involves battling for control points across a more open-ended map. The brief flyovers of Mogadishu are probably the highlights of the campaign, if only to see Unreal Engine 5 in full effect. | Image credit: Eurogamer/TiMi Studios GroupAs such, warfare comes with most of the same advantages and drawbacks of playing Battlefield multiplayer. The sense of scale and destructive firepower on show is utterly thrilling, with player-driven action happening all around you, and lots of fun ad-hoc coordination between your specific squad and your broader team. But you'll still get regularly ganked by preposterously accurate snipers hidden in the farthest reaches of the map, and SMG-wielding teenagers with L-shaped eyes ambushing you from around corners. Attack and Defend also suffers from that same, age-old problem of turning into attritional grinds over specific hardpoints, with dozens of players piling into the same few square metres of the map in an unreadable mush of munitions.The one notable difference is how Delta Force approaches battlefield roles, with players selecting from nine "Operators" rather than four classes. These operators still fall roughly into the four familiar Battlefield roles (Assault, Engineer, Support, Recon), but their special abilities provide a slightly different twist on each. Taking the assault class as an example, D-Wolf has a powered exoskeleton on his legs, enabling him to run at high speeds, and he also comes equipped with a triple-firing grenade launcher with projectiles that stick to vehicles. This lets him get in and out of the action very quickly, while also enabling him to play chicken with the enemy's mechanised forces. Vyron, by comparison has a jump pack that lets him quickly boost forward in short bursts, and also negate fall damage, which provides him a slightly different array of movement options. Playing as a team is essential in Black Hawk Down, and even then, expect a punishing ride. | Image credit: Eurogamer/TiMi Studios GroupIt's hardly radical stuff, but in the absence of a proper new Battlefield, Delta Force's warfare is a perfectly acceptable alternative. Team Jade does offer some more interesting ideas in its Operations mode, however. This is Delta Force's spin on the extraction shooter, popularised by games like Hunt: Showdown and Escape from Tarkov. Playing solo or in teams of up to three, it sees you dropping by helicopter into large open maps to fill your pockets with guns and goodies, before exfiltrating at one of several set points in the map. If you die, you lose everything you're carrying.Well, almost everything.Extraction shooters are notoriously tough, uncompromising affairs, so Team Jade's version is designed to make the subgenre more accessible. For example, when in the field, you can place a few small items in a "safe box" that will carry through with you even upon death. Players killed at lower levels are also compensated after the fact with a package of basic equipment, which takes some of the sting out of dying and makes gearing up for the next fight quicker. Operations' most interesting idea, though, is how it infuses the freeform extraction loop with more structured missions. Zero Dam features a scale model of its own map. That's it. That's the caption. | Image credit: Eurogamer/TiMi Studios GroupThese missions are not especially involved. They might require you to kill specific enemies, or use a specific weapon, or investigate certain parts of the map. Nonetheless, the rewards make them worth pursuing and I like how they gradually acquaint players with different parts of the experience, encouraging you to try different loadouts or participating in various in-map activities. Combined with the other, smaller ideas Team Jade implements, it means you nearly always emerge from a battle with something, even if you don't nab the best loot or, indeed, survive.Operations is also where Delta Force's gunplay feels most at home. Delta Force splits the difference between an arcade feel to its guns and a more hardcore approach where bullet drop and travel time are more accurately simulated. This works well enough in Warfare, but feels better attuned to Operations' brief bursts of combat. I also just enjoy how much sound plays a role in your experience. Every noise both players and NPCs make propagates across the map, right down to their footsteps. So every time you hear boots crunching into the ground, you listen intently to decipher whether they're a player or an AI goon. Actually firing your weapon, meanwhile, feels almost profane. Each Operations map has its own little twist, like the moving train in Laylani Grove. | Image credit: Eurogamer/TiMi Studios GroupThere are a couple of things I like less about Operations. Ironically, the presence of operators in this mode feels like it runs counter to its premise. Your prowess in extraction shooters is usually defined by the gear you acquire, so layering in character specific abilities on top just feels a bit inelegant. Also, Operations is crying out for a solo mode. It does let you drop into maps on your own, but you're in the mix with teams of two or three, and finding a team to complete specific missions with can be challenging.It's a shame that Delta Force's campaign is such a misfire, as a decent story mode that catered to solo players as well as teams would have elevated the entire package. Yet even without it, Delta Force does just about enough to make it a worthy alternative to the other military shooters around right now. Its individual modes might not be wildly original in and of themselves (although Operations does more to distinguish itself than Warfare), but the ability to hop from massive cacophonous battles into more methodical, squad-based adventures does have a novelty, and Delta Force does both well enough that they equally reward your time.Eurogamer sourced its own copy of Delta Force for this review, playing the public free-to-play version available to all at time of writing.

Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada has responded to a fan on social media criticising the new design of Anna Williams, stating "there will always be people like you".Yesterday Bandai Namco revealed Anna would be the next fighter to join Tekken 8 as part of its ongoing DLC roadmap, complete with a redesign of her look - as with many returning characters.However one fan shared their disappointment on social media requesting the old design return. "I don't like the new design," they wrote, "replacing Anna with this new character is the devs way at getting back at Anna fans for all these years of support makes me feel sad."Tekken 8 - Anna Williams Gameplay TrailerWatch on YouTube"While 98 percent of the fans are welcoming this, there will always be people like you," wrote Harada in response. "I understand and sympathise that it may not suit your personal taste, but if you prefer the old design, past works already exist. I am not taking those away from you."Also, you refer to yourself as 'Anna fans,' as if you represent all Anna fans, but you should express your opinion as an individual."Harada then referred to the impossibility of pleasing players, writing: "You threaten to quit if she isn't brought back. You complain the moment she is brought back. You demand that she be reverted after she has been completely redesigned from scratch, including her model and framework. And if she actually were reverted, you'd just say, 'That's recycling!'""Either way," he concluded, "your method of expressing your opinion and the content of your argument are entirely unconstructive, utterly pointless, and, above all, disrespectful to the other Anna fans who are genuinely looking forward to her."To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Harada additionally responded to a more positive response to Anna's design, and explained why he often responds to negative opinions."It's because these negative folks tend to have a narrow perspective," he said. "If I don't respond, they start spreading toxicity, saying things like, 'Why won't they engage with the community?!'"He responded to other negative comments too, stating: "If you don't like something, you don't have to buy it, you don't have to comment, and you can simply leave."Harada's comments exemplify the frustration of developers battling online toxicity. Take former PlatinumGames boss Hideki Kamiya, who called out "shitty leakers" in the wake of Nintendo's Switch 2 reveal, or Riot Games' head Anna Donlon who discussed the "current state of player behaviour" in Valorant and told toxic players to "play something else, we won't miss you".Harada caused confusion last month when he set his LinkedIn profile to "open to work", causing fans to worry he would be leaving Bandai Namco. He responded saying he wanted to "broaden [his] horizons by connecting with more people".Before Anna, Tekken 8 added Final Fantasy 16's Clive Rosfield as a DLC character.

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 hereThere is new content for Destiny 2 fans to anticipate. Leaks have revealed an imminent new mode for Episode Heresy, meanwhile, as part of the 2025 roadmap, we are set to get an expansion currently known as Apollo. While new content is exciting, there are D2 fans who would like to see the return of fan-favorites from the past. Unfortunately, this is not going to happen as Bungie have confirmed they cannot bring back old Destiny 2 content wanted by fans.Bungie confirm they cannot bring back old Destiny 2 contentIn another lawsuit completely separate to the $200 million complaint filed by former D2 director, a sci-fi writer named Matthew Kelsey Martineau has accused Bungie of plagiarism. Bungie has rejected the accusation, and in doing so they have confirmed the content no longer exists and cannot be brought back. The accusation specifically points to the Red War campaign in which Martineau argues Bungie plagiarized a faction called the Red Legion.Courtesy of a declaration document, Bungies Head of Engineering, David Aldridge,said that the Red War campaign was retired in November 2020. Although Bungie archived the original code the Red War legacy build can longer run because its outdated code is incompatible with Destiny 2s evolved underlying operational framework.Its disappointing that its practically impossible for the Red War campaign to be brought back without needing to completely be remade. Its also disappointing that this means other vaulted content prior to Beyond Light cannot be brought back either.Reacting to the news on Reddit, D2 players are disappointed, albeit not surprised. Its not just the Red War campaign players would love to see come back, its also features like songs such as the Journey mission. Some people also really want the Leviathan Raid back, while theres an argument to be made that old content would be super beneficial to new players as 75% of the story doesnt exist anymore.For more Destiny 2, leaks have revealed a weapon thats so good it feels like youre cheating, and Sony has responded to a$200 million dollar lawsuitfrom former D2 director.Related TopicsDestiny 2 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 hereThe Finals Season 5 is nearing its end, and the chapter has been a lot of fun so far thanks to the arrival of Team Deathmatch. While update 5.10.0 was a big patch that removed an OP gadget, Embark are taking a small break with The Finals update 5.11.0 patch notes.The Finals update 5.11.0 patch notesThe Finals update 5.11.0 patch notes simply include a rotation to the store to deliver a new skin themed on rock climbing:On Discord, prior to the updates release, Embark Oscar said, Today is a store update only, and its taking a little bit of extra time to get it out. There wont be any other changes in this one. Oscar also said, the store update this week is pretty sick.Image credit: The Finals DiscordWhile fans might be disappointed its not a huge update, the good news is that Embark has recently released a new trailer for the game on Steam. This has seemingly leaked new weapons for Season 6, along with a stunning new map.The end date for Season 5 is currently scheduled for March 20th, so we still have quite awhile to wait for S6 to arrive. As for the further future of the game, Embark has teased one day delivering a map that has been highly-requested by fans ever since the games launch.For more The Finals, check out our guide to thebest weapons in the game ranked, and we also have a guide to thebest gadgets. In addition, we have a guide to thebest FPS settingsto help you win matchesalong witharanking of the best classesin the game.The FinalsPlatform(s):PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series XGenre(s):Action, First-Person Shooter, ShooterRelated TopicsThe Finals Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

In Another WorldChanning Tatum's Gambit movie would have been a "'30s kind of screwball romantic comedy", which honestly sounds like the fresh take on superhero movies we need"It's kind of odd that it got scrapped."Image credit: Marvel News by Oisin Kuhnke Contributor Published on Feb. 26, 2025 Channing Tatum never got his Gambit movie off the ground, but one of its would-be stars has shed a bit of light on what the X-Men movie could have been like.You're probably pretty aware by now just how desperate Channing Tatum has been to play X-Men character Gambit. He lucked out last year with the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, where he finally got to play the character, but even now he's still pretty desperate to make a movie happen. Seeing as the MCU hasn't managed to get a wider reaching X-Men film out just yet (despite mutants now being a part of the canon), a Gambit film doesn't seem all that likely, and I doubt a TV show would be on the cards these days either. But, even though Tatum's Gambit film ultimately got scrapped, Lizzy Caplan, who would have starred in it, has shared a bit of what the film would have had going on in a recent interview with Business Insider.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. "It was a really cool idea. It's kind of odd that it got scrapped," Caplan shared. "Those movies don't seem to ever get scrapped, but it did." Caplan was attached to star in a lead role way back in 2017, though who she would have been playing was never confirmed. In this recent interview, Caplan confirmed that her casting even got her as far as meeting with Tatum and co. "We got down the road, we were gonna shoot it. I think there was a start date. I had had meetings with Channing, and there were a couple different... we had a director, then we didn't, but I had multiple meetings with Channing and the other producers."The actor also shared that it would have been a "'30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun," and honestly, I kind of agree. Superhero movies often feel pretty samey no matter who's making them, they just often fall into the pitfall of treating superhero as the genre, as opposed to just being an element of the film.Still, that version of the film will likely never materialise now, given how one-note and uniform Marvel projects are these days. Ah well, maybe we'll see Tatum as Gambit again somewhere along the line, hammy accent and all.

Godskin No Worries?Elden Ring fan-made anime director reckons Sony's deal with FromSoftware's parent company shouldn't chuck up any surprise DMCA boss battles ahead of summer 2025 releaseAs the project releases a fresh teaser offering a behind-the-scenes look at stuff coming together.Image credit: Stein Alter News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on Feb. 26, 2025 The fan-made Elden Ring anime that's been in the works for a little while now has just put out a fresh teaser confirming that it's still on track for a summer 2025 release, and it sounds like the team behind it isn't expecting last year's deal between Sony and FromSoft's parent company to throw up any unexpected obstacles.This fan project is the work of a team led by YouTuber Steins Alter, who have realsed a couple of interesting teasers for it so far, with the one in November last year coming alongside the news the release date for the full thing had been pushed back to its current window.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Now, another teaser has dropped, offering a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at the animation coming together and confirming that a summer 2025 release is still the plan as of right now.Steins Alter told VG247 last year that this revised target had been decided on "because the scope of the project grew beyond what I planned and to help accommodate the team's schedule", so it's nice to see things have seemingly been progressing as hoped since that point.Watch on YouTubeAs you can see above, this latest teaser includes work-in-progress glimpses at a bunch of the kinds of fast-paced boss battle you'd expect from an ER anime, with the likes of Malenia and Mogh being spottable as the attacks whirl and swords swing. There's also a dragon breating some fire at one point, which is cool.In the comments, one fan's responded to this teaser by asking Steins Alter if they believe that the "strategic capital and business alliance" stuck up by Sony and FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa late last year could "potentially in any way threaten your project". I'd be fairly sure those takedown requests a couple of Bloodborne-related fan projects claimed to have recieved from Sony earlier this year are what led them to pose this question.However, it seems like Steins Alter isn't too worried, responding: "We should be good".We'll have to see what happens, but it'd be a shame to see hard work possibly get waterfowl danced into oblivion if some lawyers deemed it necessary to do a thing.

Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube797kGiven the immense popularity of Balatro since its launch last year, it was really only a matter of time before it was unofficially ported over to other systems via homebrew modding.Well, that time is upon us, folks. Thanks to Haynster over on Github (via GBATemp), Balatro is now available to play on the Nintendo DS. Installation instructions are available, and you'll need to make sure you have the MicroLUA homebrew development software.Haynster has, however, clarified that a whole bunch of key features are missing from this port, so we wouldn't recommend opting for this over the OG Balatro on Nintendo Switch. Think of it as a cute little bonus; an intriguing experiment, if you will. We have to applaud the excellent effort, though.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube797kWatch on YouTube Here's what was said:"The game lacks music, different decks, and only has 12 Boss Blinds and 15 Jokers."As well as the system for finding what the current hand played is can't take hands that aren't the amount of cards that the hand should be, so say in Balatro you have a pair and 3 other random cards, in the port the game wouldn't recognize that as a pair. Trust me I tried so hard to make it work but the game never would've come out if didn't take the easier method, maybe sometime in the future."In other news, the european ratings board PEGI has announced that it is altering the 18+ rating for Balatro after a formal appeal was submitted. Judging that the game's fantastical elements mitigate the similarities to the real-world game of poker, it has lowered the rating to 12+.Balatro has now sold over 5 million copies since its launch, and also recently bagged 3 gongs at the DICE Awards, including 'Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game'. How many friends does this guy have?Justice is dealtWill you be giving Balatro a go on the Nintendo DS, or are you quite happy to stick to the original (and feature-complete) version on Switch? Let us know with a comment.[source github.com, via gbatemp.net]Related GamesSee AlsoShare:01 Nintendo Lifes resident horror fanatic, when hes not knee-deep in Resident Evil and Silent Hill lore, Ollie likes to dive into a good horror book while nursing a lovely cup of tea. He also enjoys long walks and listens to everything from TOOL to Chuck Berry. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...Related ArticlesRandom: Zelda Fan-Project Turns 'Breath Of The Wild' Into Stunning Anime OpeningCome on Nintendo, make it happenRandom: Oh No, You Can Buy A Life-Sized Gardevoir Plush From Pokmon CenterUpdate: Now available in AmericaRandom: Switch Carts Survive House Fire Unscathed Thanks To Nintendo's Sturdy CasesNow that's some packaging!

Due diligence is a costly business, and not just in the realm of investing. Even for a company trying to launch a new product or explore a partnership, finding the right data and doing the research can take weeks and get very costly if they are to make an educated decision especially when third party agencies and consultants get involved. A new AI startup called Bridgetown Research says it can make a dent in that cost base and speed up the process by using AI agents that can do most of the data collection and research work that goes into due diligence. And as part of this effort, the startup recently raised $19 million in a Series A round co-led by Accel and Lightspeed.Co-founded in December 2023 by its CEO Harsh Sahai, a former McKinsey employee and research scientist at Amazon, Bridgetown Research has built three types of AI agents that it claims can gather information, collate and condense that data, and finally present it in an easy-to-read format.Bridgetown is exploiting the very networks that consultants and researchers often use to gather insights: networks of industry experts who can provide insights on a particular company or sector. The startup essentially partners with these expert networks, and then uses its AI voice agent to interview experts for the information the company needs to find for its clients.Because insiders dont have to schedule a call with a human being, they can log on whenever and have a conversation, Sahai said in an interview. Instead of talking to one senior executive, you can talk to mid-tenure people, but a lot more of them at a much higher scale.Bridgetowns second set of agents then use large-language models (LLMs) alongside tools for clustering and regression to interpret the data collected by the voice agents, and pass this information back to the LLMs to summarize the answers. Finally, the third set of agents uses small-language models to reproduce the interpretation in a digestible form, like a presentation.Using these agents, the startup says it can produce an initial due diligence analysis in 24 hours with inputs from hundreds of respondents. Sahai said clients can either use Bridgetowns agents to gather data and insights on their own, or they can hire an independent consultant or a small consulting firm to work with the agents to get the same quality of analysis as they would from firms like McKinsey or Bain.That sounds appealing, but large language models and the AI agents built on top of them still tend to hallucinate they tend to just make up information. So how is an investor to trust research reproduced by an AI agent? Sahai says the startup addresses this with its steerability and audibility approach.This means, he explained, clients can review the data and trace every step the agent took to arrive at its conclusions, similar to the reasoning AI models out there. Additionally, the voice agents record their conversations with the experts they interview so that the information can be manually verified.He added that the AI agents do not rely on a single data source. Instead, they gather information from multiple sources, interpret it using large language models, and then employ fine-tuned models to process the data.We havent seen our approach before, Sahai said. Most platforms leave it to you to collect the information you need, and then they will process it on your behalf.Bridgetown isnt the first to tackle this opportunity to make due diligence easier we already have startups like Mako AI and DiligentIQ in the space. However, Sahai thinks other platforms do not provide a complete enough solution.Bridgetown Research has two customers in the U.K. and a dozen in the U.S. These include top-tier private equity and venture capital funds, consulting firms, and big corporations that address the M&A pipeline, Sahai said.