Back in 2020, the HyperX QuadCast S was the USB microphone every Twitch streamer seemingly had on their streams. Now, the QuadCast 2 S is here to try to one-up its predecessor. And what does it bring to the table? A lot more LEDs, for starters.
The original QuadCast only lit up in red, while the QuadCast S brought full RGB support, and even supported gradients of colors from top to bottom. The QuadCast 2 S takes it even further with a twist, literally. The new mic has over 100 individually addressable LEDs laid out in an array around the mic, allowing for more complex patterns like a spiral gradient rainbow. It’s a welcome addition, particularly for a microphone that’s so likely to be seen.
HyperX added a few less flashy features that make for a compelling upgrade too, though many of these were first introduced on the QuadCast 2. That includes a multifunction knob that controls the input gain and headphone volume and acts as a VU (volume unit) meter to keep you from peaking, plus a redesigned shock mount.
Light Up Polar Patterns
One of my favorite features on the original QuadCast S was the knob on the bottom for adjusting gain, which was both convenient and subtle. That’s gone on the new model in favor of a more typical knob that juts out of the front. It might not be quite as stylish, but it’s more useful.
Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft
The knob is flanked by a semicircle of LEDs that change color depending on what you’re doing. If you’re turning the knob while using it as a microphone, it will light up purple to indicate the gain level. When you’re not touching it, it reverts to a VU meter, indicating how close you are to peaking, so you can adjust accordingly.
You can also press and hold the knob to change polar patterns, which is indicated by the LED ring on the top of the mic. It cycles between cardioid, bi-directional, stereo, and omnidirectional patterns, with red LEDs lighting up on the sides of the mic so that it will pick up sound.
This is the most intuitive way to change polar patterns I’ve seen. For comparison, the Blue Yeti USB microphone all but requires a tutorial to decipher its arcane symbols. Here, you just keep holding the button until red lights are pointing in the direction you want to record from. Now I want this feature on every microphone I use. (It is available on the cheaper QuadCast 2.)
The Meta Quest 3 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a massive upgrade over its predecessor in almost every category. It has improved specs across the board—slightly higher resolution, a faster processor, more RAM, and the option for up to 512 GB of internal storage—but the biggest change is the mixed-reality upgrade. The previous model, the Quest 2, had external-facing cameras for orienting itself in the world and a pass-through feature that let you see the room you’re in to avoid obstacles. The Quest 3 takes it several steps further, making immersive augmented reality core to the experience.
For starters, the pass-through cameras can now show you a color image instead of black and white. It’s also slightly higher resolution, so it’s easier to tell what you’re looking at. It still feels a bit like you’re looking at an early 2000s-era YouTube video of your living room, but it’s worlds better than not being able to see your surroundings at all. This tech enables some innovative new games and experiences. One of my favorites, PianoVision, is designed to help you learn the piano by overlaying helpful information and even piano rolls onto a video of your actual, physical keyboard. It turns practicing the instrument into a Guitar Hero–like experience, and it’s something that wouldn’t be possible with VR alone.
The downside? The Meta Quest 3 is more expensive than the Quest 2 ever was (even after its midlife price hike). Starting at $500, it’s on par with buying whole game consoles, so it’s not quite an impulse buy, but if you’re looking for the best stand-alone VR headset with the widest library of games and apps that support both VR and mixed reality, the Quest 3 is the headset to beat. It’s worth noting that the company behind it all is Meta (aka Facebook). You might not like that, given Meta’s less-than-stellar history of managing user data (not to mention how that data is used). At least you don’t need a Facebook account anymore to use a Meta headset.
Supports room-scale VR, pass-through mixed reality, can operate with or without a PC, and comes with two controllers.
Every time you put on the headset, it adjusts to match your interpupillary distance. Anyone who’s ever gotten a prescription for glasses is familiar with this process. If the lenses aren’t aligned with the distance between your eyes, you can end up looking through the edges of the lenses and getting a much more distorted view. HTC combats this with motorized lenses and internal eye-tracking that detects how far apart your eyes are and physically moves the lenses to the appropriate distance.
It’s a handy feature, I wish it didn’t do this every single time I put on the headset. Fortunately, you can turn this off in the system settings, but I quickly found it irritating if I took my headset off for just a second—usually to deal with some setup process detail for some app or another—only for the headset to completely forget where my eyes are the second I slip it back on. I get that the idea is to adjust for different users, but maybe a good middle ground would be to ask users if they want to readjust each time or offer a shortcut button.
I was also annoyed at how quickly the lenses would fog up. The foam on the headset wasn’t particularly breathable, and the lenses would fog up within seconds. Eventually, it would even out as the headset warmed up, but it’s still annoying. These are the kinds of minor flaws I’d be tempted to overlook on a more accessible headset, but for a device that starts at $1,000, it’s tough to overlook.
Immersion and Control
In keeping with competitors like the Meta Quest 3S, and Apple Vision Pro, the Vive Focus Vision is designed to be a mixed-reality headset. The passthrough view is solid enough to see your surroundings and not bump into anything, though the video is still grainy and washed out. I also tried walking a few steps to my fridge and, while I made it, there’s just enough lag to make it feel disorienting.
HTC’s controllers are similar to the ones for the Meta Quest 3, with a few buttons, a couple of triggers, and full motion tracking. It also supports hand tracking, which worked pretty well in my experience, though at times it could be a bit frustrating to get my cursor to click on the right buttons with my fingers alone.
Minecraft remains remarkably popular a decade or so after it was first released, thanks to a unique mix of quirky gameplay and open world building possibilities.
A knock-off called Oasis, released last month, captures much of the original game’s flavor with a remarkable and weird twist. The entire game is generated not by a game engine and hand-coded rules, but by an AI model that dreams up each frame.
Oasis was built by an Israeli AI startup called Decart in collaboration with Etched, a company that designs custom silicon, to demonstrate the potential of hardware optimized to power transformer-based AI algorithms.
Oasis uses a transformer AI model, similar to the one that powers a large language model—only trained, apparently, on endless examples of people playing Minecraft, to dream up each new video frame in response to the previous one and to user input like clicks or mouse moves. Oasis is similar to a video-generating model like Sora except a user can control its output.
You can play Oasis online for free, and it is both fascinating and surreal to explore. Besides harboring bizarre artifacts, like misshapen livestock and stairs that go nowhere, the game has an amazing, Inception-like quality. Because each frame is generated based on what the AI model imagines should come after the frame it currently sees, the in-game world is never entirely stable, and will gladly shift and morph with a little nudging. If you stare too closely at a texture, for example, when you look up again, the block world in front of you may be completely different from the one you last saw.
It’s also possible to upload your own image for Oasis to work with. I tried adding a photo of my cat, Leona, and the game turned her into a beautiful blockish landscape (sadly not a feline character in the game, but hey …).
Oasis has become a viral hit with people exploring ways to get its AI engine to hallucinate new environments. Sometimes, it can even be tricked into teleporting you to a dark moonscape resembling The End of Minecraft. It’s telling that this generative AI project is not entirely original, but rather seems to be a bizarro knock-off of the world’s most popular game (it was trained on an open source Minecraft dataset from OpenAI).
“People are trying to teleport into different worlds and speed run,” says Robert Wachen, chief operating officer at Etched. “It’s one of the main reasons it went viral.”
The AI approach taken with Oasis is too inconsistent and uncontrollable to be useful for a conventional game, says Julian Togelius, a computer science professor at New York University. Generative AI has future potential for controlling in-game characters and perhaps generating scenes or worlds, he says, but it is still early. “It is very interesting and impressive technology, but at the moment it is an answer in search of a question,” Togelius says.
Frank Lantz, a game designer and director of the department for game design at New York University, says that Oasis seems to be caught in a kind of uncanny valley that prevents it from being genuinely fun to play. But he suggests that an enterprising young game designer might well figure out a way to turn that game into one people love. “This is so obviously cool and interesting,” he says.
Transparency mode, on the other hand, really impressed me. In this mode, the GameBuds picked up subtle ambient sounds and piped them into my ears so effectively that I forgot I was wearing earbuds. In one instance, I didn’t realize I still had them in until my voice sounded muffled. I could hear everyone else I was speaking to just fine.
ANC does drain the battery faster, as does using Bluetooth. SteelSeries claims the GameBuds will get up to 10 hours on a single charge, with the charging case extending that duration up to 40 hours. In my testing, the earbuds lasted a bit longer than 10 hours with mixed ANC use, but I rarely needed to use them for more than 10 hours straight. Between the charging case topping them off, and popping the case on a wireless charger at night, I never got so much as a “battery low” warning.
Built for Gaming
The 2.4-GHz dongle isn’t the only thing that makes the Arctis GameBuds ideal for gaming. SteelSeries has put a fair amount of development behind its Arctis app, with nearly 200 game-specific profiles designed to highlight the sounds you’d want to hear in each game.
I tried this out in my go-to competitive game, Overwatch 2. With this profile, the more bassy tones were somewhat muted. Meanwhile, the higher-pitched sounds—like, say, a Tracer’s footsteps—stuck out way more than they do on my usual headsets. I won’t claim that the GameBuds gave me superpowers, but the subtle footsteps of a flanker behind me now sounded like lightning striking next to me.
Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft
At times, it was almost a bit too much. I found myself playing on a lower volume than I typically do, just so that the harsh sounds weren’t quite so piercing. Still, games like Overwatch 2 rely heavily on sound cues to know what’s happening around you, and noticing a Reaper sneaking up behind you a second earlier can be the difference between life and death.
It’s hard to say how helpful every single one of the nearly 200 profiles would be. And, it goes without saying, but a slightly more optimized audio experience isn’t going to magically make you better at whatever game you play. That said, I’m grateful the option is there. It feels and sounds nicer when care has been taken to tailor my audio experience to a specific game.
Before trying out the Arctis GameBuds, I wasn’t convinced that “gaming” earbuds needed to be a thing. Now? I’m more convinced. The 2.4-GHz dongle, the audio profiles, and the impressive Transparency mode all helped make my gaming sessions easier and more comfortable than I would normally get wearing a full-size headset.
“For the affordable Quest headset specifically, I think that they’ve kind of mirrored the adoption and usage journey of things like the Nintendo Wii,” Gebbie says. “That kind of affordable gadget that you buy as a family thing that you give to your kids.”
Horizon still has adult fans, and in their eyes, the kids are not alright. You can find thread after thread on Reddit of people complaining about children ruining the vibes of virtual spaces like VR chat. Or hear horror stories about kids getting into sketchy situations—being exposed to bullying or harassment by other kids or, more worryingly, adults.
Higgin says this friction is typical of social spaces that include a wide range of age groups, as kids just have a different way of relating and interacting with the world than adults do. “And in these spaces, that makes it hard for any adult to tolerate,” he says. “The whole crowding around, and everyone talking at once, and just shouting memes. Meta might not have a choice here. It might be the first, like, takeover by kids of a virtual digital space that I can think of.”
In 2018, Bailenson coauthored a report with the children’s advocacy organization Common Sense Media that offers advice to parents who have concerns about what their kids experience in VR. It encourages keeping VR use sessions short, utilizing parental content controls, and, most importantly, participating or at least keeping an eye on what their kid is getting up to in their virtual world.
“They’re anonymous, their parents can’t see what they’re doing like they can on a normal TV or video game, and there’s no physical consequences their actions might bring them in the real world,” says Bailenson. “That trifecta is what’s enabling a lot of this behavior.”
Playground Rules
A VR classroom in Horizon Worlds.
The names of the kids’ avatars have been blurred to protect their privacy.
Really though, the kids are doing kid things. Running around, playing with bubble guns and interactive objects, chatting with friends and making new ones. Many of the kids in Horizon Worlds are friendly, and they run right up to other users to wave or say hi. In offshoot rooms, they play games like tag or floor-is-lava. Lots of areas in the shared Horizon rooms just feels like a playground, reverberating with laughter, yelling, and the occasional shrieks of adolescent anger. Kid stuff!
But the metaverse also has an underbelly. Spend enough time cruising around in Horizon, and while it may look like a cartoon wonderland, you’re bound to see the seedy side of humanity emerge. And experts have criticized the platform and Meta’s sometimes allegedly lax approach to policing its virtual spaces. After all, the company doesn’t have a great track record of protecting kids on Facebook or their privacy. Nor is Meta all that interested in cultivating its own transparency.
I remember the first time I watched a tutorial on Blender, a 3D computer graphics software, explaining how metal surfaces have colored reflections, while non-metal surfaces don’t. It was a fascinating art lesson and something I don’t think I ever would’ve noticed if no one had pointed it out. I felt excited to learn about such a cool, if inconsequential detail about how our world looks. While testing out Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro, I experienced that same feeling over and over again.
Generally, video game graphics have reached the coveted point of “good enough.” When Horizon Zero Dawn came out in 2017—years before the PS5 would come out—no one thought its visuals were lacking. Far from it. Yet, when Sony released a remaster of this less-than-a-decade-old game that, arguably, no one asked for, it was … actually pretty good.
The visual comparisons between the two versions of the game highlight what “better graphics” means in the modern era. Rather than focusing on things like adding more pixels or polygons, the current flex comes from either adding more stuff to the game world or getting more frames with the visuals you have. And the PS5 Pro offers a lot more room for both. Whether that makes it worth the $700 asking price is more subjective.
Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft
Better Graphics
In most PS5 games, adjusting graphics boils down to one of two simple options: Fidelity (sometimes called Quality) mode versus Performance mode. The former is focused on getting the best possible picture quality, while the latter prioritizes more frames per second, and thus a smoother gameplay experience. The pitch for Sony’s latest console is that with more horsepower under the hood and fancy new AI and ray-tracing features, you won’t have to choose between one or the other.
The reality is more complicated. Much like gases expanding to fill the volume of their containers, video games tend to expand to fill the amount of processing power available to them. This is why despite some games being capable of running in 4K at 60 frames per second at least as far back as the PS4 Pro, it’s still not the default today. Every console is capable of running Stardew Valley in 4K at 60 fps. But it’s a lot harder to render a photorealistic, foliage-covered, post-apocalyptic sandbox.
Developers have to make choices about what to include and what to cut when designing their virtual worlds. Is it important to have more trees and bushes? Or should more people be walking around? What should a player see if they look in the mirror? These kinds of things might seem unimportant until you walk into a bustling space metropolis that feels like a ghost town.
Even More Immersive
While testing the PS5 Pro, many of the games I played felt more lively and full. Not because there were more pixels necessarily, but because developers weren’t budgeting their effects so tightly. In Spider-Man 2, for example, switching from Performance to Fidelity mode on the original PS5 would add more cars on the roads, more pedestrians on the sidewalk, and more trees and bushes strewn about. On the PS5 Pro, however, there were more of all of these things in Performance mode than the regular PS5 had in Fidelity mode.
Updated November 2024: This story has been updated with the new availability of Stardew’s 1.6 update.
The popular farming sim and ultimate cozy game Stardew Valley dropped a major update on Tuesday after months of anticipation. Stardew’s 1.6 update has an insane amount of new content that touches every area of the game, from new menus and DIYs, to a new farm layout, new crops, and the ability to have multiple pets and play with seven friends at once. It’s enough updates to make the game feel fresh, but it isn’t so new that you can’t ease back into a beloved farm and toil away.
As of November 4, 2024, the free update is available for players on all platforms. The update was initially only available for PC players using Steam, but it’s now available for console and mobile players too. If you don’t have the game yet, you can purchase it on Steam for $15 for PC, Linus, and Mac computers, or the shop for your console of choice, like the Nintendo Store ($15) or Xbox Store ($15). You can also purchase it for mobile in the Apple Store ($5) or Google Play Store ($5) to play on your mobile devices. There are no cross-saves, so each platform will have its own files and farms.
As soon as the PC update arrived back in March, I opened up Stardew Valley and started a file with the brand-new farm layout (which has me very broke) to dive right in. The update also works on your existing Stardew files, and I’ve been bouncing back and forth between my brand-new file and a later-game file to see what’s new in different seasons. Everywhere I look, I see something new. Moss to forage off trees! New reactionary dialog from NPCs! A prize machine in the mayor’s house!
If you hate spoilers, I’m honestly not sure why you read this far, but you should definitely stop reading. I’m about to tell you about some of the biggest changes I’ve spotted since playing the updated game.
Screenshot courtesy of Nena Farrell
Ranch Mode
The biggest change to see right away is the new farm layout. Stardew’s 1.6 update adds the Meadowlands Farm, a grass- and animal-focused design for my fellow animal ranchers. This farm grows a special blue grass that game creator Eric Barone says animals will love. It can raise animal’s hearts faster, improving the eggs and milk they give you. There’s less farming land available, and a few changes to initial quests. I’m enjoying the Meadowlands Farm so far—I immediately created one when the game dropped–even though starting with two chickens and no parsnip seeds is definitely a slower path to the infinite wealth I’m seeking. But even though I’m broke, it’s still been fun to have such a different start to the game.
Screenshot courtesy of Nena Farrell
Fresh Crops
The first question my sister asked me when I started playing: “Are there new crops?” At first, I told her no. I didn’t see anything new to purchase in the shop. But there are new crops with the update–you just won’t find them in any stores.
Instead, you find four new crops (one for each season!) in a few different ways—mainly, digging them up from the ground in the game’s well-known Artifact Spots, although spots with these new crops have a slightly different style you’ll be able to spot. You can also win them in the brand-new Prize Machine in the mayor’s house, once you get your hand on a prize ticket. The new crops are carrots for spring, summer squash for (shocker) summer, broccoli for fall, and powdermelon in winter. These new crops can be used in the game’s main quest, too. Just choose Remixed Bundles for the Community Center in your starting settings.
In game development, iteration is everything. Developers learn how to make games by actually making them. Surgent is no different. With their first game they built a team and found their voice. Now, they want to make a follow-up worthy of Zau.
“We want to emulate that sense of building with a community of people, with gamers in mind and with the players in mind,” Salim says. The team has made a Metroidvania already. RPGs are where they want to fire next. “What if Planescape: Torment had a baby with Batman: Arkham and that kind of combat, that kineticism,” he says of the game’s inspirations.
As for being Afro-gothic, Salim says the idea is to blend African culture with the sensibilities of Mary Shelley. Like its predecessor, the game draws from elements of African folklore and spiritual beliefs. Salim also opted to set Uso in the same universe as Zau, he says, to reflect “the different shades of life and world as the world as a whole.”
For Zau, Surgent Studios partnered with EA Originals, Electronic Arts’ initiative to fund small, independent projects—a model Salim says traditionally means everything is kept under wraps until the game is nearly finished. This time, the studio wants to involve its would-be players in the planning process by showing their hand while it’s still a prototype.
Game studios often use early access or involvement to better shape their games; Supergiant is currently gathering player feedback for its highly anticipated sequel to Hades. Salim hopes that by involving Surgent’s audience early, they can also help players better understand game development and how the industry works.
That’s a literacy direly needed in online game communities, where conspiracies about the impact of consultancy companies, “wokeism,” and “forced DEI” have wormed their way into conversations with and about devs at game studios. Developers seek third-party guidance for a variety of reasons: sensitivity reads, additional writing resources, to ensure accuracy, and more. Firaxis, for example, worked with Shawnee tribes on its upcoming strategy game Sid Meier’s Civilization VII to make sure they were properly representing the culture.
Surgent is no different. Salim sought help from many people when working on his first game. Content creators have honed in on its involvement with consultancy Sweet Baby Inc., which has been the target of an ongoing harassment campaign for advising studios on the representations of minority groups in their games. Across message boards and YouTube, they claim Surgent’s attempts to bring diversity to games is the reason for the studio’s financial troubles.
There are associated costs as well. These games are priced more like console games than iPhone games. Death Stranding is $40, although it is a universal app, which means your single purchase works on a Mac too (and with superior performance). But Assassin’s Creed Mirage is $50 and a long-awaited Mac port appears lost in the desert. Also, Death Stranding downloads close to 50 GB of data as you progress, and even “lightweight” AAA titles need 15 GB. Not ideal if you’ve a 128 GB iPhone. Apple would argue you can offload games and retain their data, but you won’t want to download dozens of GB every time you want to play.
Dig Into the App Store
Gripes aside, these releases remain objectively fun, even if they sit awkwardly between tech demo and something you’d actually want to play on a phone. It’s worth remembering, however, that they aren’t the first AAA efforts to make it to iPhone. Several publishers—most notably, Feral—have been bringing PC games to iPhone for years, and they’re often more suited to the hardware, because they’re less demanding.
Grid Autosport launched on PS3 and PC in 2014 and came to iOS three years later. It remains a great racer and works well on iPhone due to Feral’s optimized port. (The 2022 follow-up Grid Legends is due in December.) The 2018 PC release Wreckfest is now two years old on iPhone—and runs at 60 fps on the latest iPhone Pro. (Capcom’s recent Resident Evil 7 port benefits in a similar way.) These titles are also cheaper (usually $10 or less) and require less storage.
In fact, we’d argue the iPhone’s gaming strength stems from its rich back catalog rather than from shiny new toys. So while it might not replace your current-gen console, your iPhone can complement it as you explore older AAA titles—or the countless indies that originated on the platform. Much has been written about iPhone gaming having a reputation for junk prior to the current crop of AAA titles. That’s nonsense. There are plenty of great games if you know where to look.
Try All-You-Can-Eat Subscriptions
That said, you might not want to dig through App Store dross to find gems. Subscriptions provide a handy shortcut. Apple Arcade gets flak and rapidly ditched efforts to be the HBO of mobile gaming when it pivoted to engagement and retention. Yet plenty of quality remains, such as Balatro, What the Car?, and Shovel Knight Dig. Netflix has also built a quality mobile catalog that now includes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Hades, and remasters of Grand Theft Auto and World of Goo.
Playable games as seen in the Xbox Cloud Gaming platform
When you want to move beyond mobile games and ports, try streaming. Xbox Cloud Gaming works well as a progressive web app saved from Safari to your Home Screen, giving you access to a rotating list of quality titles. Focusing on the other end of gaming history, Antstream Arcade (available on the App Store) combines retro games, worldwide high-score tables, and fun challenges. Both services require a solid, fast internet connection and—surprisingly—make an effort with touchscreen controls, even if the games they house were resolutely designed with a controller in mind (and are better played with one).
Emulation is another option for classic games, and received a boost when Apple in 2024 dropped its rule banning emulators from loading external files. This has resulted in several quality emulators appearing on the App Store, including Delta, PPSSPP, and RetroArch. Just be mindful that the emulation ecosystem lags far behind Android’s, in part due to remaining Apple restrictions making it impossible to emulate much hardware beyond the original PlayStation. Although if you’re old enough, that might be a blessing.
‘Consolize’ Your iPhone
So an iPhone can, to varying degrees, replace consoles from the PS5 back to the Atari 2600. But can it be a console? Apple had all the component parts of an “anywhere” console long before the Switch—Apple TV, AirPlay, cross-device game sync—but never connected the dots.
An iPhone is seen connected to a Playstation controller and an Anker hub.
It still hasn’t entirely. Beyond native Apple TV titles (which, these days, mostly means Apple Arcade), you can mirror your screen to an Apple TV—or plug and (hopefully) play using a USB-C to HDMI cable or HDMI dock for a more robust experience. But there are shortcomings when mirroring an iPhone display.
Black borders abound. The distracting Home indicator is often present. There’s no landscape Home Screen nor any means to launch games using a controller. Button labels don’t always match the controller you use. You may suffer from a touch of lag. We found the best console-like experience actually comes from Delta—ironic, given that Apple for years rejected it. In part, this is because Delta uses the TV as a proper second screen rather than mirroring, which means no black borders.
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