An anonymous reader writes: “Hoisted by their own GPTards.” That’s how Meta’s Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun described the blowback after OpenAI researchers did a victory lap over GPT-5’s supposed math breakthroughs. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis added, “this is embarrassing.” The Decoder reports that in a since-deleted tweet, OpenAI VP Kevin Weil declared that “GPT-5 found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erdos problems and made progress on 11 others.” (“Erdos problems” are famous conjectures posed by mathematician Paul Erdos.)
However, mathematician Thomas Bloom, who maintains the Erdos Problems website, said Weil’s post was “a dramatic misrepresentation” — while these problems were indeed listed as “open” on Bloom’s website, he said that only means, “I personally am unaware of a paper which solves it.” In other words, it’s not accurate to claim GPT-5 was able to solve previously unsolved problems. Instead, Bloom wrote, “GPT-5 found references, which solved these problems, that I personally was unaware of.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
LunarG in August announced KosmicKrisp as a Vulkan-to-Metal driver for a better Vulkan API experience on Apple macOS devices compared to the likes of using MoltenVK as another Vulkan-on-Metal adaptation. As of today the KosmicKrisp driver for Vulkan 1.3 on Apple devices is now in the Mesa 26.0 codebase…
Two Falcon 9 rockets lifted off from spaceports in Florida and California on Sunday afternoon, adding 56 more satellites to SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network.
The second of these two launches—originating from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California—propelled SpaceX’s Starlink program past a notable milestone. With the satellites added to the constellation Sunday, the company has delivered more than 10,000 mass-produced Starlink spacecraft to low-Earth orbit.
The exact figure stands at 10,006 satellites, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who expertly tracks comings and goings between Earth and space. This number includes dozens of Starlink demo satellites, but not the dummy spacecraft carried on SpaceX’s recent Starship test flights.
Five years after the release of the Galaxy S20 FE, Samsung has settled into a predictable pattern with its “Fan Edition” line of phones. Each new phone doesn’t offer much new or different from its immediate predecessor, with the company opting to offer iterative updates instead.
That might have been fine before, but with the arrival of the Nothing Phone 3a Pro and Pixel 10 — devices that changed the value proposition in their respective categories — the S25 FE feels woefully out of touch with a market that’s changing to meet people’s demands. There’s not much here that makes the new Galaxy S25 FE stand out, and any “upgrades” aren’t substantive.
When I first took the S25 FE out of the box, I thought Samsung had played a cruel trick on me. The phone looks identical to its predecessor, sporting the same brushed aluminum frame that’s been the company’s go-to for years now. I had to dig the S24 FE out of my gadgets drawer to compare the two phones before I confirmed they were in fact different devices.
The physical differences are minor. Samsung has tweaked the dimensions of the new phone, making it slightly shorter, wider and thinner. Specifically, the S25 FE measures in at 6.35 x 3.02 x 0.29 inches, while its predecessor was 6.38 x 3.04 x 0.31 inches. The new phone is also protected by Samsung’s “enhanced Armor” aluminum frame.
More noticeable is that the S25 FE is lighter than last year’s model, coming in at 6.7 ounces, down from 7.51 ounces. This is despite the fact the new device has a higher-capacity 4,900mAh battery. Together, these changes don’t make the S25 FE easier to hold if you have small hands (just ask my girlfriend), but it does feel better balanced than its predecessor. One issue with the size of the S25 FE is the placement of the in-display fingerprint sensor. It’s right at the bottom of the screen. I found this made it awkward to unlock the phone with my thumb — and I’m someone with big hands.
Another slight difference is the finish on the back of the phone. This time around, Samsung has gone with a matte coating, instead of the glossy finish it used on the S24 FE. It’s a welcome change since it makes the new model less prone to smudging and attracting fingerprints. I just wish Samsung had decided to offer the S25 FE in more fun colors. At release, it’s available in four colorways: white, icy blue, jet black and navy (pictured). So, if you don’t like blue, I’m sorry.
Amid the slight design tweaks, Samsung has gone with the same screen it did last year. The S25 FE has a 6.7-inch AMOLED display, with a panel that offers a 120Hz refresh rate and 1080p resolution. The S24 FE’s vibrant screen was one of the best parts of last year’s model, and it’s the same with S25 FE. It’s easy to see the screen in bright sunlight, thanks to the fact it can push 1,900 nits of peak brightness. It’s also vibrant, and with HDR10 support included, great for watching videos on YouTube, Netflix and elsewhere.
Samsung made a single tweak to the Galaxy S25 FE’s camera hardware. Like last year’s model, the new phone has a 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and a fast f/1.8 aperture lens. Once again, it also has an 8MP telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom and a 12MP ultrawide angle that offers a 123-degree field of view.
The one addition is a higher resolution 12MP front-facing camera with a faster f/2.2 aperture lens. For selfies, the S24 FE made do with a 10MP sensor and f/2.4 lens. If the new front-facing camera included phase detection autofocus (PDAF), it would be the same one that’s available on the Galaxy S25. Unfortunately, it doesn’t and that’s a shame because PDAF greatly increases the likelihood your photos will come out sharp and in focus.
It’s also a shame Samsung decided not to update the FE’s telephoto camera. Before the Nothing 3a Pro, that was one of the features that made the S24 FE stand out in its price range. In 2025, however, the S25 FE’s telephoto feels outdated. It doesn’t offer the 5x optical zoom of the Pixel 10 nor the 50MP of resolution and periscope zoom you get with the 3a Pro. Coming from the former, the FE’s telephoto camera felt limiting. With only 8MP of resolution, trying to snap a photo at anything beyond 5x zoom was pointless; it would just turn out a blurry mess.
As for FE’s other cameras, they’re decent if uninspiring. The 50MP camera is the best of the bunch, capable of capturing detailed, good-looking photos even in low light. The ultrawide, meanwhile, is mostly forgettable. It does an okay job of capturing big scenes, but it’s lacking in dynamic range and detail. The selfie camera is a noticeable upgrade from the one that came with last year’s model, and produces pleasing photos that are on par with what you can expect from the S25’s front-facing camera.
Otherwise, snapping pictures with the S25 FE feels like using a flagship phone from a few years ago. The one thing that saves it from being a complete blast from the past is the inclusion of Samsung’s generative photo editing software, which you can use to remove distracting objects from photos. Of the AI photo apps I’ve tested, Samsung’s is among the best at editing out objects without smearing the background. You can also use the generative edit to add things to a photo, but as you might expect, this doesn’t work as well as removing them.
On paper, the S25 FE should offer better performance than its predecessor, thanks to Samsung’s decision to equip the phone with its Exynos 2400 chipset over the cut-down Exynos 2400e it used on last year’s model. In practice the two are about on par with one another. On Geekbench’s processor test, the Exynos 2400 delivered a 2,144 single-core score and a 7,059 multi-core score. That’s not much better than the 2,140 and 6,690 I recorded last fall on the S24 FE.
Still, it’s a more impressive showing than either the Pixel 9a and Nothing 3a Pro had when my colleague Sam Rutherford and I put their Tensor G4 and Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chips through Geekbench earlier this year. For comparison, the former delivered a modest 1,665 on single-core performance and 4,294 on multi-core performance. The latter scored an even less impressive 1,115 and 3,082 respectively.
In real-world use, the Exynos 2400 feels snappy. Scrolling is fast and fluid, as is opening apps and switching between them. Gaming performance is also impressive, with the chip able to handle the 60 fps modes in graphically demanding games like Diablo Immortal and League of Legends: Wild Rift without dropping frames.
Last year, Samsung said it redesigned the S24 FE’s vapor chamber to make it bigger and improve cooling. With the S25 FE, that component is an additional 10 percent larger. However, if the new vapor chamber made a difference to the phone’s thermals, I had a hard time telling. Both the S25 FE and S24 FE got warm after about 15 to 20 minutes of gaming. The new phone never got hot to the point I couldn’t hold it anymore, but it also didn’t feel noticeably cooler than the S24 FE running the same games.
As mentioned at the top, the S25 FE has a larger 4,900mAh battery. That’s about four percent more capacity than the S24 FE offered. As a result, any difference in battery life is minimal. I’m sure there are some scenarios the S25 FE may last longer than its predecessor, but in my testing the two phones were equal in terms of longevity. With three to four hours of active screentime, I managed to get a full day of battery life from the S25 FE, with enough power left over to get the phone through the night before charging it in the morning. That’s similar to the experience I had last year.
Speaking of charging, the S24 FE, with a 25 watt wired limit, was painfully slow at it. Going into this review, my hope was the S25 FE would do better and I had good reason to be hopeful. Samsung lists the new phone as capable of charging at 45 watts. However, in my testing the S25 FE was only slightly faster than its predecessor. Plugged into a 130 watt Razer GaN charger, it took the phone about an hour and 14 minutes to charge to full from a battery at 10 percent life. When I replicated that same test with a 25 watt charger, it took the S25 FE just over an hour-and-a-half to charge back up.
Either way, if battery life is important to you, the Nothing 3a Pro and Pixel 9a are better bets. Both come with bigger batteries (5,000 and 5,100mAh, respectively), and with the former, you also get 50 watt charging.
The S25 FE ships with Android 16 and Samsung’s One UI 8 out of the box. Samsung has promised to support the phone with at least seven generations of platform updates, so it should stay current with Google’s yearly release schedule up until at least Android 23 in 2032. Notably, this means the S25 FE may end up on a more recent version of Android than the S25, S25 Edge and S25 Ultra, all of which released with Android 15.
With One UI 8, the S25 FE has access to all of the latest AI features from both Samsung and Google. Some of these tools are useful; others replicate functionality that has been present in Android for a long time. For example, Google’s Circle to Search is great. It makes it easy to do a visual search of anything on the phone’s screen. On the other hand, I could do without Samsung’s Now Brief, which offers much of the same utility you’ll find on Android’s Discover page (a feature that comes standard on every Android phone).
Each S25 FE also comes with six months of free access to Google AI Pro. Normally priced at $20 per month, the service gives you access to some of the company’s best models, including Gemini 2.5 Pro, inside of the Gemini app. Within Flow, Google’s AI filmmaking app, you also get limited access to Veo 3.1, Google’s latest video generation system. Some other perks include 2TB of cloud storage and higher rate limits when using NotebookLM.
With changes that amount to window dressing, I can’t recommend anyone buy the S25 FE at full price. There’s just enough here to justify spending $650 on a phone that is barely an upgrade over its predecessor. If you’re a Samsung fan, I’m sure the S25 FE will be frequently discounted, but why reward the company for a lazy effort? Besides, the S25, following a $200 discount for Prime Day, was only $10 more than the FE earlier this month.
Over the past few years, Google and Nothing have shown midrange phones don’t need to be boring, iterative affairs. For Samsung, I think it’s time to rethink its FE strategy. If these phones offered something different — say actual fan favorite features like a headphone jack — there could be compelling reasons to recommend them. But as things stand, there’s just no reason to buy a new FE phone when the company’s flagships see steep price discounts within months of their release.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/samsung-galaxy-s25-fe-review-iterative-to-a-fault-183026577.html?src=rss
AMD is hosting an AI Day out in San Francisco today and as part of those festivities today they announced the ROCm Core SDK 7.9 SDK paired with TheRock build and release infrastructure system they have been crafting…
The Sims is in a period of transition — and as part of that, the ongoing mobile version will be shutting down in a few months. From a report: EA announced that today’s update for The Sims Mobile will be its last, and that on January 20th, 2026 the game “will no longer be accessible to play and will be sunset.” The mobile iteration of the franchise first launched in 2018, and has seen more than 50 updates since then. EA says that starting today players will no longer be able to spend real money in the game, and that it will be delisted on both iOS and Android tomorrow before the servers shut down completely next year, making it entirely unplayable.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
The Apple Watch’s hypertension notifications may soon have a competitor. Oura, maker of smart rings, is planning to pursue FDA clearance for their own warning feature for high blood pressure. Oura members can sign up for a study soon in the Oura app.
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, can lead to problems with your heart and blood vessels over time. That’s why medical professionals measure it at office visits and why people who have high blood pressure may take medications or use diet and exercise to try to control it.
Oura said in a press release that the feature will be called a “blood pressure profile” and will only require the Oura ring itself, no blood pressure cuff needed. The app will not report your actual blood pressure, but it will let users know if they nave “no signs,” “moderate signs,” or “major signs” of hypertension. People who register major signs would be advised to follow up with a medical professional.
Oura says that it has received approval from an institutional review board (IRB) to do a study with Oura members. (They have not named the institution they’re partnering with.) Oura says that people who sign up for the study will be asked to fill out a questionnaire about their family history, medications, and lifestyle habits. Oura will use these answers along with data from the Oura ring. You can read more about the study on Oura’s website here.
Oura says the study is now available in the Oura Labs section of the app. (I don’t see it in mine, but I have to assume it will be there soon.) To find Oura Labs, tap the menu icon in the top left corner of the app, then tap Oura Labs. This screen shows experimental features and has links to studies that members can sign up for.
Members who are eligible for the study include those who are 22 or older, based in the U.S., using the English language version of the app, and using a gen 3 or 4 Oura ring. Members who are pregnant, less than 12 weeks postpartum, or who have cardiac implants like pacemakers are not eligible for the study.
At the end of February, Anthropic announced Claude Code. In the eight months since then, the coding agent has arguably become the company’s most important product, helping it carve out a niche for itself in the highly competitive AI market. Now, Anthropic is making it easier for developers to use Claude Code in more places with a new web interface for accessing the agent.
To get started, you’ll need connect Claude to your GitHub repositories. From there, the process of using the agent is the same as if it had direct terminal access. Describe what you need from it, and the agent will take it from there. Claude will provide progress updates while it works, and you can even steer it in real-time with additional prompts. Through the web interface, it’s also possible to assign Claude multiple coding tasks to run in parallel.
“Every Claude Code task runs in an isolated sandbox environment with network and filesystem restrictions. Git interactions are handled through a secure proxy service that ensures Claude can only access authorized repositories — helping keep your code and credentials protected throughout the entire workflow,” said Anthropic.
In addition to making Claude Code available on the web, Anthropic is releasing a preview of the agent inside of its iOS app. The company warns the integration is early, and that it hopes “to quickly refine the mobile experience based on your feedback.”
Pro and Max users can start using Claude Code on the web today. Anthropic notes any cloud sessions share the same rate limits with all other Claude Code usage.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-brings-claude-code-to-ios-and-the-web-180023611.html?src=rss
Tesla shareholders should reject a compensation plan that could pay Elon Musk more than $1 trillion over the next decade, proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) said in a report Friday.
The plan is designed “to retain Musk and keep his time and attention on Tesla instead of his other business ventures,” but “there are no prescriptive elements within the award to ensure his focus and time remain on Tesla as opposed to his other ventures, undermining the award’s primary rationale,” the advisory firm said in a report for its clients.
The “astronomical grant value” awarded to Musk could dilute value for other shareholders “due to the extreme value and number of shares being granted,” and it is questionable whether the award “is necessary or appropriate to further align his interests [with Tesla] when he currently holds a 19.8 percent ownership stake in the company,” ISS said.
The month-long Simpsons mini-season will reportedly start in November and include new crossover skins
The post <i>Fortnite</i>‘s Map Will Reportedly Turn Into Springfield From <i>The Simpsons</i> Next Month appeared first on Kotaku.
The Sims Mobile is going away as EA will shut it down on January 20, nearly eight years after its debut in March 2018. An update that went live on Monday is the final one and the company is delisting the game on October 21. Since the game requires online servers (game progress is stored there), it’ll no longer be possible to play The Sims Mobile in three months’ time.
“The Sims Mobile and The Sims community as a whole are full of creativity, kindness, and imagination,” EA said in a blog post. “You’ve amazed us with your stories, builds, and Sims. We’re proud to have shared this journey with you, and as a token of our appreciation, we’ve prepared a few surprises as we head into TSM’s final chapter.”
EA will run 14 events, including limited-time quests and treasure hunts, in The Sims Mobile over the next few months. It’s no longer possible to spend any real money in the game, though players can use their existing in-game currency. As of today, players also have unlimited energy, which “should make it easier to complete projects and enjoy the last few months of play,” EA said. On January 6, EA will unlock all of the Build Mode and Create A Sim items so players can fully customize their homes and sims’ looks for a couple of weeks before the grim reaper shows up for The Sims Mobile.
Back in 2022, EA and Sims studio Maxis announced Project Rene, a game that will run across multiple platforms, including mobile. So it’s maybe not too surprising that the company wants to focus its Sims mobile efforts there.
In any case, the shutdown stinks, especially for those who have spent money on The Sims Mobile as well as for the sake of game preservation. The decision to scuttle the game won’t exactly allay concerns that fans of the series, which has a significant LGBTQ+ fanbase, have about the future of The Sims if and when the planned sale of EA to a group that includes Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund goes through.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ea-will-shut-down-the-sims-mobile-in-january-173958279.html?src=rss
China says it has uncovered what it describes as irrefutable evidence of American government cyber attacks targeting the National Time Service Center. The Ministry of State Security said the National Security Agency exploited vulnerabilities in employees’ mobile phones beginning March 25, 2022, and later used stolen login credentials to access the center’s computers starting April 18, 2023.
The facility in Xi’an provides high-precision timekeeping service for the government, civil society, and various industries. It also supplies data used to calculate international standard time. Chinese authorities said investigators found that private servers worldwide were employed to conceal the attacks’ origin. The accusations emerge against a backdrop of mutual cyber-espionage claims between Washington and Beijing. Western governments and companies have repeatedly blamed Chinese hackers for intrusions in recent years.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
There’s a lot to like about NordVPN, as I covered in my full NordVPN review. It’s one of the fastest among the best VPNs, and it’s got a bunch of cool, specialized servers for various VPN tasks. But the apps can be frustrating, and beyond that, no VPN is perfect for everyone. If you’ve decided NordVPN isn’t for you, here’s how to cancel your subscription and get your money back.
Even though you’ve decided to part ways with NordVPN, you may want to keep your subscription active while you pick out a replacement service. If that’s the case, you can simply cancel automatic renewal and let your subscription expire at the end of the billing period. If you change your mind before then, you can turn auto-renew back on. Here’s how to do it.
Go to my.nordaccount.com. Click Log in to Nord Account and enter your email address and password.
You’ll arrive at the account overview page. In the left-hand column, click on Billing.
On the list of subscriptions that appears, find NordVPN. Find the line that says “Auto-renewal: ON,” and click the Cancel link next to it.
A warning message will appear. Click Cancel auto-renewal at the bottom-right.
This will turn auto-renewal off. If you decide to turn it back on, just go back to the billing tab of your Nord account overview, find your NordVPN subscription and click Enable auto-renewal.
If you paid for NordVPN on a mobile device through Google Play or the Apple app store, you’ll need to go to the relevant app store to cancel the subscription. On Android, sign in to Google Play, touch your profile picture, tap Payments & subscriptions and tap Subscriptions. Scroll until you find NordVPN, tap it and hit Cancel subscription. If you want a refund, follow the instructions in “How to get a refund from NordVPN” below.
On iOS, open the settings app, touch your profile picture, then tap Subscription. Scroll down to NordVPN, tap it and hit Cancel subscription. To get a refund for an Apple purchase, contact the Apple support team instead of the NordVPN team.
On the other hand, if you’re sick of NordVPN and already have another VPN lined up, you can cancel immediately by deleting your Nord account altogether. This will also cut you off from any other Nord Security products you might be using, including NordPass and NordLocker.
Go to my.nordaccount.com, click Log in to Nord Account and enter your credentials.
At the top-right of the account overview page, click your email address. In the dropdown menu, click Account settings.
Look at the bottom of the page to find the account deletion controls. Click Delete account.
Nord will send an authentication code to your account’s email address. Enter it.
Follow the onscreen prompts to confirm deletion.
NordVPN has a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. As long as you bought your subscription in the last 30 days, you can get a full refund. To do so, you’ll need to first cancel auto-renewal on your plan as described above, then contact support to ask for the refund.
You can reach NordVPN support by going to the help center at support.nordvpn.com. To reach the live chat and email ticket options, you’ll need to work your way down to a bottom-level help center article, then scroll down until you reach the section titled “Still having issues?” It’s frustrating, but you can get there by just clicking the first link on every page (or just follow this link and scroll down).
Once you’ve found the buttons, either start a live chat or open the email form. Whichever you choose, explain that you’ve cancelled your subscription and would like a refund. Make sure not to end the interaction until you’ve received confirmation that your refund will be processed. Afterwards, it’ll take up to 10 business days for your reimbursement to go through.
With NordVPN cancelled, you may be in the market for another VPN. I’ve collected several on my best VPN list (linked at the start of the article), but here’s a few specific recommendations: Proton VPN is the best overall, Surfshark is the fastest and ExpressVPN is good for beginners and great at streaming. Good luck in your quest for a VPN that meets your needs.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/how-to-cancel-nordvpn-and-get-your-money-back-173008588.html?src=rss
Oura has redesigned its official app with a refreshed visual interface and new health-tracking insights. The company boasts that the app refresh offers “modern visual language with deeper personalization.”
To that end, there are now three main and easily identifiable tabs. The “Today” tab includes only the most relevant data to help inform daily decisions. The “Vitals” tab offers “at-a-glance views of core health pillars.” This includes data on sleep, stress and cardiovascular trends. Colors change based on various biometric indicators to offer quick visual cues.
The “My Health” tab is more interested in long-term health, offering cumulative data on a user’s strengths, traits and opportunities for proactive care. This tab also includes a section about habits and routines to link “daily behaviors to measurable outcomes.”
The new Oura app also offers some increased health-tracking capabilities. The previous version of the app included a view that showed a month of data regarding menstrual cycles and fertility window predictions. This has been increased to a full year. Members also now get personalized cycle phase data from a single night of sleep instead of having to wait two months like before.
The app is launching “in the coming weeks,” but there’s a spot of bad news. It’ll only be available for the Oura Ring Gen3 and the Ring 4. The Ring 4 recently got a hardware update, with an option for a durable ceramic coating
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/ouras-new-app-brings-enhanced-health-insights-and-longer-fertility-window-predictions-171329174.html?src=rss
It’s a neat but weird time for Microsoft gaming
The post Xbox Addresses Next-Gen Plans And PC Handheld Pricing appeared first on Kotaku.
Reach is a VR action-platformer from nDreams that aims to let players run, jump, and slide in a way that most VR games intentionally avoid. Does the game’s movement gel well with combat and puzzles? Read our full review to find out.
Reach Details:
Developer: nDreams
Available On: Quest 3 & 3S, PC VR, PlayStation VR 2
Reviewed On: Quest 3
Release Date: October 16th, 2025
Price: $40
As an action-platformer, Reach is about two core things: movement and combat.
On the movement side, Reach feels great. The game combines tried-and-true VR climbing gameplay with a small tweak to jumping that makes a big difference to how the game feels.
Rather than just pressing ‘A’ to make your character leap into the air, you instead need to hold the ‘A’ button and do an arm-raising gesture (as if you’re swinging your arms up for some extra momentum before a leap). It might seem like a small tweak, but it feels more natural and immersive. You can even do the motion with alternating arms to make jumps in quick succession, which I found fun (although the game didn’t seem to explicitly build around it).
Between jumping, climbing on handholds, and using a grapple tool that you get a bit later in the game, I felt like I had a ton of freedom and control over my movement, all while feeling quite comfortable throughout. That is… until the spinning platforms appeared. More on that in the Comfort section below.
Then of course there’s the other core part of the game: combat.
While the movement feels well-executed, combat design feels somewhat scattered. Perhaps most unfortunately, it doesn’t synergize particularly well with the movement.
Core to the combat issue is the player’s weapon. It’s a bow which has several special arrow types. It’s fun to use, but as a two handed-weapon, the player has no access to any of their movement abilities except walking or running on flat ground. A system of slow-motion—activated by drawing the bow while the player is in mid-air—could have been an alluring mechanic to allow players to weave bow shots into their movement.
But limiting the player’s access to movement during combat isn’t the only reason why a two-handed weapon is an odd choice in Reach.
In addition to fun movement, the game also allows players to grab onto walls to pull themselves in and out of cover (used to great effect in two other nDreams games: Fracked [2021] and Synapse [2023]). But… you can’t really use the cover system effectively while also using a two-handed weapon like a bow.
And then there’s the shield which the player can throw, Captain America style. It feels fun to summon, throw, and recall… but once again: a shield takes one hand to use, meaning you can use it in conjunction with a two-handed bow.
The saving grace to the two-handed issue could have been the guns that you can occasionally steal off of enemies. But doing so requires using a rare resource and guns only have three (yes, three) shots before they break. Yes, that limited ammo at least allows the stolen guns to be enjoyable one-hit-kill powerhouses, but it also means you’re quickly back to the bow in your hands which ultimately limits the rest of the game’s combat.
This seemingly small issue (a two-handed weapon as your primary means of combat) unfortunately keeps the game’s combat from really shining by fragmenting the roster of tools that players have to work with. I’m truly curious to see what the game would feel like if the player’s main weapon was a one-handed crossbow instead of a two-handed bow.
Between exploring, solving puzzles, and fighting, there’s a lot to like in Reach. But the experience overall felt hampered by weak pacing. The rate at which new concepts, mechanics, weapons, and enemies are revealed felt too slow, like the game was being stretched out for the sake of length.
Reach took me about seven hours to beat, which included finding most of the hidden upgrades and roughly half of the hidden collectibles. That length sounds pretty good for a $40 game, but better pacing would have made for a more enjoyable experience even if it meant a shorter game.
Combat may not have reached its full potential in Reach, but the game has undeniably strong VR fundamentals which help significantly with immersion.
Almost every part of the game (except tutorial and objective pop-ups) feels natively designed for VR. Your map, for instance, can be projected into your hand by raising your palm and holding the trigger. Elevators aren’t activated with a button press but with a big floating cube that you pull into place with a satisfying *clonk*. Weapons have ammo indicators built into their design (instead of a number floating in the air). You can do stealth takedowns by sneaking behind an enemy and ripping out their ‘core’. Instead of doors with hinges, every door in the game is a sliding door (which is so much better for VR usability).
And your entire ‘interface’ is built into your gauntlets. Looking at your arms reveals your health, how many special arrows you’re holding, and more.
The entire game feels diegetic at its core—the way every VR game ought to be.
However, outside of key objects, there wasn’t a whole lot of interactivity with the world. There was the rare movable prop, while the vast majority of objects in the game world are static and non-interactive. And while the environmental art direction was strong, running through so many completely static rooms and corridors made the world feel somewhat empty and uninteresting.
The only respite from the many static rooms was the occasional upgrade station you can find by seeking out less obvious pathways and more challenging puzzles. These were fun to hunt, but the upgrades didn’t feel particularly meaningful.
Reach was entirely comfortable to me all the way up to the last quarter of the game, right up to the point that they introduced platforming puzzles rotating pillars.
Smooth rotation is perhaps the most common trigger of motion sickness in most people. Using smooth rotating pillars as the core of the game’s most challenging platforming puzzles is… well, it’s just not a smart choice. When a puzzle is built around a mechanic that causes motion sickness, falling back to the ground and knowing you need to climb up all over again feels like actual torture.
I didn’t need to play with vignette for any of Reach until I got to the rotating pillar puzzles. After attempting the first rotating puzzle I was immediately uncomfortable enough that I needed to take the headset off and come back a few hours later. When I returned to the game I turned on the vignette setting which saved me from quitting the game outright, but still didn’t fully prevent some discomfort.
I expect that enough people who play the game will get motion sick from the rotating puzzles that nDreams ought to have an accessibility option which simply removes them from the game, or offers a way to skip them.
One other notable comfort issue with the game was also an issue of smooth rotation: the game attempts to auto-rotate the player to face some particular direction when they’re climbing sideways or around corners. Again, forced smooth rotation is simply not comfortable for many people. After playing the game for sessions of an hour or so, I had a lingering sense of slight rotations in real life that I’ve never felt after playing any other VR game. I would have happily switched this auto-rotation option off, if the game had bothered to offer a toggle.
‘Reach’ Comfort Settings – October 16th, 2025 |
|
Turning |
|
| Snap-turn |  |
| Quick-turn | |
| Smooth-turn | |
Movement |
|
| Teleport-move |  |
| Dash-move | |
| Smooth-move | |
| Arm Swing-move | |
| Blinders | |
| Head-based direction | |
| Controller-based direction | |
| Swappable movement hand | |
Posture |
|
| Standing mode | |
| Seated mode | (not explicit) |
| Artificial crouch | |
| Real crouch | |
Accessibility |
|
| Subtitles | |
| Adjustable difficulty | |
| Two hands required | |
| Real crouch required | |
| Hearing required | |
| Adjustable player height | |
The post ‘Reach’ VR Review – Platforming Perfected, Better Pacing Preferred appeared first on Road to VR.
The first demo for Futurama Hit & Run is here and show’s off the total conversion’s first level
The post Fans Have Turned <i>Simpsons Hit & Run</i> Into A <i>Futurama</i> Game And It’s Awesome appeared first on Kotaku.
GORN 2, the VR arena battler, gets new weapons and enemy variants with a free Halloween update.
Developed by Free Lives and Cortopia Studios, GORN 2 is a VR brawler that pits players against waves of towering, muscular gladiators searching for glory. Announced today, GORN 2 has released a slew of seasonally appropriate additions to the base experience via a free – and aptly named – Fight of the Living Dead update.
0:00
Here, you won’t be battling against living warriors alone and get the chance to break the bones of skeletons, too, as you tackle a new boss who wields the ability to awaken dead fighters. There’s a range of thematic weapons to utilize, including a scythe, a crossbow, and a giant bone-shaped hammer. Besting the big bad will reward you with a powerful tool called the Resurrection Staff, which enables avid duelists to raise an army of their own Rokibe to fight alongside them.
A slew of Halloween updates continue to hit the VR space this year, with Phasmophobia and Smash Drums launching Halloween events, as well as Trombone Champ: Unflattened and Ghosts of Tabor releasing thematic DLC packs. With All Hallows’ Eve just around the corner, we’ll be rounding up all the seasonal updates, DLC packs, and horror-centric games we’re aware of soon.
GORN 2’s Fight of the Living Dead Update is available now on Quest and Steam. While it’s not live on PlayStation VR2 as well, publisher Devolver Digital informed UploadVR this will follow at a later date.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale