Tag: gaming

Acer Nitro 17 (2024, AMD) Review: Great Power Yet Affordable

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With all the chatter about the artificial intelligence features of Intel’s new Core Ultra CPUs, it’s easy to forget that AMD has been busy doing AI too. AMD has outfitted many of its Ryzen processors with neural processing units (NPUs) since mid-2023, and it’s continued to expand its AI offerings ever since.

Acer’s latest Nitro 17 gaming laptop (model number AN17-42-R9TH) is built atop an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, which sits near the top of AMD’s product line. If you’re engaging with AI on the desktop, you’ll probably bypass the CPU altogether. With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics processor in the Nitro 17, everything from gaming to AI image generation gets a significant boost. Aside from the processors, Acer hasn’t exactly pushed the specs to the limit here: 16 GB of RAM and a 1-terabyte solid-state drive are more or less entry-level options today.

That’s just what’s under the hood. On the outside, the Nitro 17 is every bit the beast you are probably expecting, with a 17.3-inch screen (resolution limited to 1,920 X 1,080 pixels), a daunting 34-millimeter thickness, and a weight that tops 6.3 pounds. It is the heaviest and thickest laptop I’ve tested since 2018, and that’s without the power brick (another full pound).

Photograph: Acer

This laptop has been tricked out for gamers—arguably gamers from the ’90s, but gamers all the same. Sharp, angled corners abound from every angle. The screen is spaced away from the back of the laptop by about a centimeter and propped up on a small riser that feels like a separate device bolted on top of the chassis. It’s largely the same design as 2023, minus a few graphical flourishes.

The responsive keyboard rests in a beveled tray, and it’s color-backlit with four tunable zones and a variety of modes that let colors roll across the keys in various patterns. There’s a numeric keypad and full-size arrow keys along with custom keys, like a Copilot button and a Nitro key that launches Acer’s NitroSense software, which lets you tune every aspect of the laptop experience. Above the keyboard is a stand-alone button that cycles through four power modes, from Quiet to Turbo, all exactly what they sound like.

A tour around the sides and back of the laptop reveals plenty of ports, including two USB-C ports— one USB 3.2, one USB 4—an HDMI jack, a microSD card slot, a full-size Ethernet adapter, and three USB-A ports—one USB 3.2 and one USB 2.0. Why there’s a crusty old USB 2.0 port on the device I can’t fathom, but with this many connectivity options, it probably doesn’t matter much. Much of the rest of the space around the edges features various vents and grilles for the dual exhaust fans. When they run, which is any time there’s a moderate load on the machine, they can get a bit noisy, though I’ve encountered plenty of louder machines in recent years. I expected more from the speakers on the unit, though they’re fine for casual entertainment and gaming use.

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April 30, 2024
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Review: A Gaming Laptop Perfect for Both Work and Play

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A beefy graphics card paired with the lovely 14-inch screen size at an affordable price? That’s the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, and when you add extras like an OLED display and battery life impressive for a gaming laptop, it’s hard for me to not fall in love with this thing.

The G14 is the smallest model in the Zephyrus line, so it’s extremely portable. You can outfit it with an Nvidia RTX 4060 or 4070 graphics card, depending on whether you want to save some cash or max it out. It feels as comfortable to use as the Macbook Air M1 (2020) that I use for work, but it comes with luxury features that make playing games—and even watching movies—a top-tier experience.

Work-Life Balance

The Zephyrus G14 isn’t built to be a powerhouse—consider a laptop like the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 for that—but what power it does have is well allocated. The Zephyrus is powered by AMD’s Ryzen R9 8945HS, a powerful processor, paired with the RTX 4060 laptop graphics card—it tackles most games with ease and can even run some of the heaviest AAA titles reasonably well.

Both Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077 managed to maintain a respectable 50 to 60 frames per second on medium graphics settings at the laptop’s full 2,880 X 1,800 resolution. Starfield dipped to around 40 fps in areas like New Atlantis that have famously struggled to get very high frame rates. But this is still reasonably high given that Starfield is capped at 30 fps on the Xbox.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

When adjusting the display to 1,080p, I could crank the graphics settings in Cyberpunk and Starfield up to high while maintaining roughly the same 50 to 60 fps. By staying on medium, I got over 60 fps in both games. I prefer the latter approach since smoother gameplay feels better for me than extra foliage detail, but there’s flexibility here to tailor the experience to your desires.

Like most gaming laptops, you won’t spend much time playing on this machine away from a charger. However, the G14 still impressed by getting nearly two hours of gameplay while running games like Cyberpunk. Overwatch 2 lasted closer to an hour and a half, which makes sense, given that in faster-paced competitive games, I tend to lean on getting at least 90 fps for a smooth experience.

When using the laptop for more typical work or casual use, I got closer to 11 hours of battery life, impressive among any Windows laptop. I could easily use the Zephyrus G14 as my daily driver and feel comfortable getting an entire day’s worth of work done on a single charge.

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April 23, 2024
Delta Is an iOS Game Boy Emulator That (Likely) Won’t Get Taken Down

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Video game emulators are having a tough time. Back in March it was Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, which got shut down following a lawsuit from Nintendo. Pizza Emulators, another Nintendo emulator, disappeared around the same time. Then, over the weekend, after Apple updated its restrictions on retro game emulators to allow them in the App Store, a Game Boy Advance app called iGBA became a fast favorite. iGBA didn’t make it through Monday.

The emulator that iGBA resembled, though, is now available on the app store: Delta, a free, upgraded version of an emulator designed specifically for iOS that supports games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and DS, making games created for those systems playable on iPhone screens. The emulator is “focused on providing a polished, easy-to-use emulation experience, with iOS-specific features like AirPlay,” says its creator, Riley Testut. It supports a variety of controllers, including Nintendo Switch Pro controllers, Joy-Cons, Nintendo Switch Online controllers, and PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Apple loosened its App Store restrictions to allow retro game emulators onto its store earlier this month. The main stipulation in its rule change was that the emulation apps comply with “all applicable laws.” (Nintendo has a history of cracking down on sites that traffic in ROMs, which are playable software versions of its hardware game cartridges.) Apple also expressly forbids “copycats” in its store. “Don’t simply copy the latest popular app on the App Store, or make some minor changes to another app’s name or UI and pass it off as your own,” its guidelines read. In the case of iGBA, it itself was a version of another developer’s work.

Testut, a USC student and app developer, tells WIRED he first learned of iGBA’s existence on Discord, where Patreon supporters were talking about it Saturday night. He quickly recognized his handiwork in the emulator listed on the App Store. “Not only were the controller skins and UI identical, but the app’s internal name was literally ‘GBA4iOS.app.’”

Online, Testut expressed shock and disappointment that iGBA had made it onto Apple’s platform before his own project. “I’m pissed that Apple took the time to change the App Store rules to allow emulators, and then approved a knock-off of my own app” even though he’d been trying to launch an update of GBA4iOS called Delta ”since March 5,” he wrote on Threads.

Testut says that the developer responsible for iGBA emailed him “and personally apologized for the mess …They didn’t expect this all to happen so quickly,” Testut says.

Apple declined to comment.

As the game industry grapples with saving older titles at risk of disappearing forever, emulators like Testut’s are likely to be more in demand all the time. “We’ve seen repeatedly that IP owners are resistant to (consistently) porting old titles to newer hardware, preventing later generations from playing them,” Testut says. “Emulators ensure that old games can still be replayed decades later, similar to playing old audio recordings.”

Even industry leaders believe emulation could be the answer to the preservation problems in gaming. “My hope (and I think I have to present it that way as of now) is as an industry we’d work on legal emulation that allowed modern hardware to run any (within reason) older executable allowing someone to play any game,” Xbox head Phil Spencer told Axios in 2021. Microsoft has since set up an internal team focused on preservation of Xbox games.

Apple has already opened the door for emulators on its app store; iGBA has proven that there’s a very eager market waiting. Delta—as long as it stays in Apple’s good graces—might finally be it.

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April 17, 2024
Influencers Are Trying to Go Viral By Playing ‘Content Warning’—a Game About Going Viral

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Ben disappeared somewhere in the pitch black of the Old World. A handful of streamers gathered to investigate its monster-filled caverns and hallways, only to find their friend had gone missing. “Did Ben die?” one wondered aloud, just before another spotted him with relief in his voice. “I’m not even kidding, it took me,” Ben starts to say. “It carried me a mile underground.” One of his companions interrupts: “Wai-wai-wait, shut up, shut the fuck up, shut up! Tell that story on camera now.”

“Oh, OK OK,” Ben replies, getting into position. Someone shines a flashlight on him. The light hits a gelatinous monster behind him. It yanks him away, again, before he even can finish his sentence. Luckily, his kidnapping is all on camera this time, and content creator videogamedunkey has a potential viral hit on his hands—both in the game, Content Warning, and on his real-life YouTube channel.

In the week since its release, Content Warning—a co-op horror game about trying to film monsters (and survive) to get views on a faux YouTube—has been a runaway hit for developer Landfall Games. In the first 24 hours after it hit Steam, more than 6 million players downloaded it.

Built by a tiny team of five developers in just six weeks, Content Warning has quickly become gaming’s latest trending topic by being a sendup of the very players it was made for: game streamers aiming to go viral and the fans who love to watch them. A perfect meta commentary on how far some influencers will go for a win. Across YouTube and Twitch, where the game’s fans are most visible, everyone just knew what to do: film, film, film.

The team behind on Content Warning sensed they had something special the first time they recorded a video of their expedition and watched it together. “It was instantly hilarious,” says developer Zorro Svärdendahl. It’s not that they’d done anything special—in fact, they’d mostly filmed each other walking behind trees and playing peek-a-boo—but the bones were there. They just had to make the game’s videos punchier.

In the game, players have three days to capture footage good enough to rack up views online, but every time they enter the game’s Old World they’re at risk. Monsters tend to appear suddenly out of the dark, sometimes with jarring screams.

A finished video, which surviving team members gather to watch at the end, typically has a The Blair Witch-ian found footage quality to it—shakey shots taken while running, a lot of screaming, and above all people barking things like “get this on film.” The game’s goofy aesthetic for its SpookTubers, who have figures similar to arm waving inflatables and faces players create by typing emoticons, makes the whole thing all the more entertaining.

Content Warning is part of a long tradition at Landfall Games, which releases a small, silly game every year on April Fools’ Day. One year, it was a “horse-drifting-romance-roadtrip-battle-royale”; for another, it was a parody of battle royale. This year’s title is about the many players who have seamlessly adapted to being influencers. There’s a huge social element at work, where people are role-playing with their friends in the game. Sometimes it’s a YouTuber-type. Sometimes it’s as a news reporter trying to do a very tumultuous interview. People get creative.

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April 10, 2024
Is a Nintendo Switch Worth Buying Right Now? (2024)

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With that in mind, there are a few nuggets that might be certain. The next console is likely to remain a hybrid home and portable console—reporting from VGC indicates this is the case, and it’s a natural progression given Nintendo’s recent trajectory. After the company has sold more than 132 million portable consoles, it’s unlikely to revert to a system that can’t leave your TV’s side.

Other reports suggest the next console might have a slightly larger screen, use an LCD panel (as opposed to OLED, found on the more recent Switch refresh), and presumably have more powerful processors. But specs are specs. They can tell you only so much about how a console works or feels in person.

We don’t know whether the new console will be backward compatible with old games. Nintendo has only occasionally supported the previous generation of games on its newer consoles. Until we know for sure, it’s hard to say whether it’s worth waiting for the new console. If it can’t play most of the games available on the Switch, then it’s not a question of whether to wait, but which games you want to play. Since the Switch already takes the cake for the longest gap between prior Nintendo consoles, it’s a safe bet that developer kits are already in developers’ hands to prepare games for the new console.

2025 Might Be the Year

It’s unlikely the next Nintendo console will arrive in 2024. Multiple outlets, including VGC, Eurogamer, and Bloomberg, have reported that Nintendo has delayed the Switch’s successor to the first quarter of 2025. Additional reporting by Japanese outlet Nikkei (via VGC) further corroborated this information, citing that the delay is intended to shore up supply to reduce scalping and device shortages.

We might still find out more about the Switch’s successor in the coming months. Previous reports suggested that Nintendo was originally aiming for a holiday 2024 release. The original Switch was announced in October 2016 and released in March 2017, about five months apart. If Nintendo plans to launch its next console in the first quarter of 2025, we may get an official announcement this fall.

Nintendo tends to use less powerful, more outdated hardware compared to Xbox and PlayStation consoles—though it pulls off some incredible feats with it—so it’s natural to be eager for the next model when the current one is looking so long in the tooth. Nevertheless, the Switch will be Nintendo’s primary console at least for another year. And even after that, it’s still a great console that will be able to play some truly excellent games for a long time.

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March 28, 2024