If you need proof that the video game industry’s current rerelease craze has started to lose the plot, look no further than Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.
Like Sonic Generations of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Sony’s latest gives its debut Horizon game a major visual upgrade that’s far more polished compared to its predecessor. Unlike those games, though, Horizon Zero Dawn isn’t a release from two or three generations ago; it only launched in 2017. Seven years may sound like a lifetime for younger players, but it’s barely any time at all as far as console generations go. If Sony was going to convince players to double-dip, it would need to deliver one heck of a remaster.
I’ll give credit where it’s due: Guerilla Games and Nixxes have risen to that tall task. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered pumps the PlayStation4 classic up with significantly improved lighting, more detailed faces, brighter colors, and more edits that genuinely do add up. Throw in some DualSense support and you’ve got a definitive edition that anyone coming to the series for the first time should start with. That all may be true, but the reality is that all the improvements in the world still can’t quite make sense of what’s undoubtedly the most needless remaster of this generation.
When Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered was first announced, I rolled my eyes. From a casual perspective, I could barely see a notable difference in its first trailer. After all, 2017 and 2024 aren’t all that far apart in terms of tech. Seven years used to signify an enormous hardware gap, but the differences between two PlayStations continues to shrink with each new machine.
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Now having spent significant time with the console version, I’m willing to eat some of my words. The remaster offers a significant improvement over its predecessor, but one that takes a bit to become apparent. The original game already put its best foot forward in its cinematic opening sequence that shows gorgeous glimpses at its landscapes. When I started a fresh save file and saw it again, I was momentarily stunned. When I pulled up a video of the PS4 opening and watched it side by side, I came back to Earth. Yes, the lighting was improved and infant Aloy looked much cleaner, but the changes didn’t feel too significant.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
My tune quickly changed the deeper I got into its early hours. The first moment that caught my attention was actually a tiny detail. I was in a sequence where a young Aloy finds herself exploring a buried facility full of old computers. I marveled at the more detailed rocks and the streaks of light shining in, but I didn’t snap to attention until I walked into a room full of computers. Their bright purple screens cut through the darkness with a bold glow that drew me toward them. It’s an unassuming tweak over the original game’s flatter lighting, but one that builds more of a contrast between the electronic world and the natural one.
As it turns out, that would become a very functional change. When I’m hunting robots in the wild, their lights are brighter and more pronounced too. It makes it much easier to see my prey from a distance and track them without needing to swap my focus on. While fidelity and performance are always the selling points of projects like this, it’s those thoughtful changes that actually enhance Horizon’s gameplay and world.
There are a lot of obvious changes that one could point to that show off just how much better it all looks. Once I’m in basic conversations with NPCs as opposed to more directed, cinematic scenes, I can see noticeable improvements in faces. It’s obvious in small side characters like Olin, whose bald head gets the shine it deserves, with more detailed skin and smoother edges. When I’m sent into the mountains to complete The Proving ceremony, I see a snowstorm falling around me compared to the original’s much lighter weather conditions. Even little details in the world’s foliage are apparent, as I can see each reed of tall grass precisely bend as my body moves through them.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
You might think that all of this pushes Horizon closer to hyperrealism, but I’d actually argue that it all works to make it more stylized. The original game had a somewhat flat aesthetic that was big on earthy tones. Its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, would better define the series’ look by peppering in brighter colors that set the world apart from, say, Far Cry. This remaster follows in those footsteps to great effect. Erend’s scarf is a much sunnier shade of yellow. The blue ropes that dangle off of characters similarly pop, with an almost neon hue. Looking back at the PS4 version, and it now looks like raw film that’s yet to be color graded.
In those ways, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is a strong visual upgrade that doesn’t just turn the realism knob up and call it a day. It retroactively makes the original more consistent with what the series has evolved into since. That might annoy preservationists who see the color choices and lighting of the original as part of its language, but it’s all tastefully done as far as redos go.
All of this looks great written out or in side-by-side comparison videos, but is any of it an actual good reason to replay a game that still feels brand new? This isn’t a case of Sony porting an inaccessible old game to PS Plus; Horizon Zero Dawn has always been readily available to buy and play on PS5. The same has been true for Until Dawn and both Part 1 and Part 2 of The Last of Us, three games that have gotten similarly needless double-dips during the PS5’s short lifetime. Of those four games, Horizon Zero Dawn’s update feels like the most superfluous.
I genuinely can’t imagine how many people on Earth are so eager to replay a fairly recent game where a visual touch-up that makes foliage look better will get them excited. I get the more aspirational pitch here. For those who have never played Horizon Zero Dawn, this is a great entry point that better connects it to Horizon Forbidden West. Even then, it’s a flawed execution. The Last of UsPart 1 worked as an upgrade because its release was timed alongside HBO’s very popular TV adaptation of it. It was a smart time to bring the PS3 game up to speed, giving it more accessibility features to account for a larger wave of potential players. Horizon’s rerelease isn’t pinned to any such cultural moment. The closest is the upcoming release of Lego Horizon Adventures, but that’s specifically built as an entry point for kids. If they were ready to graduate to the real series after playing it, they could have just done that and skipped the middleman altogether.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
And when is enough enough when it comes to visual upgrades, anyways? Sure, the remaster looks excellent, but it’s still imperfect. Character models tend to unnaturally jerk into place from time to time. When Aloy touches her hair in a cutscene, her hand still goes right through it. I leap to a zipline at one point and Aloy momentarily glides just above it, clinging onto nothing until she’s snapped into place. What is the end goal of an upgrade like this? We don’t need to revisit and revise a game every single time the tech bar moves. Duller colors or less porous faces are not flaws that need to be fixed, just as Casablanca doesn’t need to be colorized.
It’s a bit of a tired cliché when writing about games to say “Who is this for?” Ultimately, every game has an audience, and there’s surely some hive of Horizon superfans out there who will happily take any excuse to replay what’s ultimately an excellent open-world game. But I sincerely find myself asking who projects like this are actually made for. Did we get 2023’s Dead Space remake because it was the right time to revisit a classic or because EA needed to keep a valuable IP relevant? Is there a good reason to replay Until Dawn in 2024, or is Sony Pictures worried that its upcoming film adaptation won’t make a splash if the 2015 game isn’t back in the public eye? Is Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered for me or is it built to be a line item on a fourth-quarter spreadsheet?
These are healthy questions to ask as video game publishers double down on remasters and remakes. It’s easy to get caught up in the kind of hype cycles that can so easily convince us that every game is a gift to players. The cold, hard reality of Sony’s recent remasters is that they are motivated by business more than art. Turning Horizon into a lifestyle brand that players engage with every year is a marketing tactic. That doesn’t mean these games can’t be great. Astro Bot’s collection of PlayStation cameos are built to sell a brand to you, but it doesn’t hurt what’s ultimately a joyful game full of meaningful nostalgia.
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This is a long way of saying that it’s both possible and healthy to hold two thoughts at once: Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is an unnecessary product that pads out PlayStation’s light holiday lineup, and it’s a gorgeous upgrade that brings new color to a generational classic. If you’ve never played the original, it’s a good excuse to finally jump on that. If you have, nothing about your life will change by upgrading and spending another 60 hours with it. Whether or not your time and money are worth it are up to you, but know that Nixxes and Guerrilla Games have put in the extra effort to make sure there’s a beautiful world waiting for you if you decide to dive in.
This week’s new Macs all had one thing in common: a minimum of 16GB of RAM. That was true of the new Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and iMac, which were all refreshed with M4 processors this week. The MacBook Air was refreshed to start at 16GB of RAM, too, even though it didn’t get a bump up to the M4 chip. The change brings an end to the long-running era of 8GB of RAM as the default on consumer-grade Macs.
Apple had transitioned most of its Macs to 8GB of RAM by 2016. But now, after eight years, that quantity feels increasingly insufficient. Reviewers have criticized the entry-level RAM as limited since at least 2022. Local AI features like Apple Intelligence, which need constant RAM to work, have only accentuated the need to change things.
That said, Apple isn’t getting generous with RAM everywhere. If you want more, it’ll still cost you a pretty penny. Apple charges $200 for extra memory — for example, bumping the iMac from 16GB to 24GB is $200, while it costs $400 to go all the way to 32GB.
The RAM upgrade likely has to do with the launch of Apple Intelligence. As I wrote in September, the general approach to running on-device AI models is to keep them persistently loaded in RAM. 8GB already felt like a pittance (even if Apple itself thought it was just as good as 16GB), and that would’ve been felt much harder if users had to give some of that up to run AI.
Infamous Russian-linked threat actor Midnight Blizzard has been targeting US officials with spear phishing attacks across a range of government and non-government sectors, new research has claimed..
Findings released by Microsoft Threat Intelligence state Midnight Blizzard has been using these attacks to gather information since first being observed on October 22.
These campaigns have also been observed and confirmed by Amazon and the Government Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine.
Highly targeted spear phishing
The latest spear phishing attacks utilize a strong social engineering aspect, relying on Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Zero Trust hooks to lure targets into opening Remote Desktop Protocol (RPD) loaded files attached to emails. These files effectively allow Midnight Blizzard to control features and resources of the target system through a remote server.
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Midnight Blizzard would also be able to conduct significant information gathering on afflicted devices through mapping the target’s local device resources, including information on “all logical hard disks, clipboard contents, printers, connected peripheral devices, audio, and authentication features and facilities of the Windows operating system, including smart cards.”
This mapping would occur each time the target device connects to the RDP server. Through the connection, Midnight Blizzard can install remote access trojans (RAT) to establish persistent access when the device is not connected to the RDP server.
As a result, Midnight Blizzard would be able to install malware on both the target device and other devices on the same network, alongside the potential for credential theft during the RDP connection.
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The campaign has so far targeted officials in governmental agencies, higher education, defense, and non-governmental organizations across the UK, Europe, Australia and Japan. You can see the full details on Microsoft’s mitigation measures here.
Chatbot versions of the teenagers Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey have been found on Character.ai – a platform which allows users to create digital versions of people.
The foundation set up in Molly Russell’s memory said it was “sickening” and an “utterly reprehensible failure of moderation.”
The platform is already being sued in the US by the mother of a 14-year-old boy who she says took his own life after becoming obsessed with an Character.ai chatbot.
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In a statement to the Telegraph, which first reported the story, the firm said it “takes safety on our platform seriously and moderates Characters proactively and in response to user reports.”
The firm appeared to have deleted the chatbots after being alerted to them, the paper said.
Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, said the creation of the bots was a “sickening action that will cause further heartache to everyone who knew and loved Molly”.
“It vividly underscores why stronger regulation of both AI and user-generated platforms cannot come soon enough,” he said.
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Esther Ghey, Brianna Ghey’s mother, told the Telegraph it was yet another example of how “manipulative and dangerous” the online world could be.
Chatbots are computer programme which can simulate human conversation.
The recent rapid development in artificial intelligence (AI) have seen them become much more sophisticated and realistic, prompting more companies to set up platforms where users can create digital “people” to interact with.
Character.ai – which was founded by former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas – is one such platform.
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It has terms of service which ban using the platform to “impersonate any person or entity” and in its “safety centre” the company says its guiding principle is that its “product should never produce responses that are likely to harm users or others”.
It says it uses automated tools and user reports to identify uses that break its rules and is also building a “trust and safety” team.
But it notes that “no AI is currently perfect” and safety in AI is an “evolving space”.
Character.ai is currently the subject of a lawsuit brought by Megan Garcia, a woman from Florida whose 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer, took his own life after becoming obsessed with an AI avatar inspired by a Game of Thrones character.
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According to transcripts of their chats in Garcia’s court filings her son discussed ending his life with the chatbot.
In a final conversation Setzer told the chatbot he was “coming home” – and it encouraged him to do so “as soon as possible”.
Shortly afterwards he ended his life.
Character.ai told CBS News it had protections specifically focused on suicidal and self-harm behaviours and that it would be introducing more stringent safety features for under-18s “imminently”.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure is out today. While nothing has been officially announced by developer Deck Nine or publisher Square Enix, several aspects of Double Exposure’s conclusion suggest that there is an intention to release a direct sequel.
Ending spoilers follow for Life is Strange: Double Exposure.
Most obviously, the very end of Double Exposure’s credits proclaims: “Max Caulfield will return.” It’s the kind of proclamation that became a cliché thanks to Marvel Cinematic Universe movies promising that the heroes they feature would come back to theaters in the future. To see that used in a very different kind of superpower-related media like Life is Strange is unexpected, but apt.
This message appears at the end of Life is Strange: Double Exposure, confirming that Max Caulfield will return in the future.Square Enix
At the very least, it’s a confirmation that Max Caulfield is too iconic a character for Square Enix to leave behind. It was a bit of a surprise that Double Exposure starred her when it was announced, but now we should expect her to be a key player in the series going forward. Looking at how Double Exposure’s narrative wraps up, there’s also some clear indication of where it will go next.
The biggest twist in Double Exposure is that Max’s friend, Safi, also has superpowers. She can transform into other people, and her actions ultimately cause the storm at Double Exposure’s climax. Max refuses to kill Safi and creates a merged timeline for Safi to survive. After that, Safi tells Max that she will search for other people with powers now that she knows she isn’t the only one with them.
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Max can choose to agree to support her or not, and Double Exposure ends with her giving a pep talk to her friends about how they’ll be prepared for whatever comes next. A post-credit scene sees Safi recruit Diamond, a student Max interacts with a lot throughout the adventure and who has powers, after the events of this game. It’s unknown exactly where the story will go from here, as no official announcements have been made and there is no insider information on it. I’ll personally speculate that this is setting up a sequel where superpowered characters from other Life is Strange games could potentially appear.
That continuation is likely a ways from release, though, so for now, we can just enjoy Double Exposure for what it is and wait for Square Enix to make an official announcement. If you want to experience this ending, Life is Strange: Double Exposure is now available for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Sharp has a new camera-centric flagship to offer, but its availability will be limited
This handset was announced in Japan, as you may have guessed. It will be hitting the Japanese market in December, and will then move to Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore. That’s about it, though. Users from Europe and the US won’t be able to get their hands on it.
This phone does offer a rather unique design, and it’s obvious it’s camera-centric. There is a huge camera oreo on the back, with three cameras on the inside. Leica lenses are also a part of the package.
Sharp used vegan leather on the backplate, though what’s interesting is that leather doesn’t cover the entirety of the backplate. Sharp left some room on the left side for whatever reason, probably for the design effect.
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A flat display is used, while the phone also includes a physical camera shutter
On the front, you’ll see a flat display with a centered display camera hole at the top. The bezels are very thin here. All the physical buttons sit on the right side. The power/lock key is located below the volume up and down buttons, while the camera shutter key is placed lower on the right side.
This smartphone has a 6.7-inch QHD+ (3120 x 1440) Pro IGZO OLED display. That panel offers a variable refresh rate from 1 to 240Hz, and an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner too.
The SoC choice is a bit odd, though
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 fuels this smartphone, not the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is an interesting move by Sharp. The phone also offers 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
There is also a vapor chamber cooling system included here, and it extends to the ring around the camera too, which is interesting. That camera ring can also hold accessories like ND or polarized filters for the camera.
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Four 50.3-megapixel cameras are used here, three of which are on the back
A 50.3-megapixel main camera packs in a huge 1/0.98-inch sensor. That camera has a 23mm f/1.8 aperture lens and supports OIS. A 50.3-megapixel telephoto camera offers an f/2.6 aperture lens and uses a 1/1.56-inch sensor. 2.8x optical zoom is available, as is 20x digital zoo. OIS is supported here too.
The third camera on the back is a 50.3-megapixel unit too, but with a 13mm f/2.2 aperture lens. This camera offers a field-of-view (FoV) of 122 degrees and is used to capture macro shots. A fourth camera sits on the front, and it’s also a 50.3-megapixel unit. It has a 23mm f/2.2 aperture lens with an 84-degree FoV.
Android 14 comes pre-installed, while the phone is water and dust resistant
A 5,000mAh battery is also included, while WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are both supported. Android 14 comes out of the box, while the phone will receive up to 3 OS updates and 5 years’ worth of security patches. It’s IP68 certified for water and dust resistance too.
This smartphone is priced at JPY190,000 ($1,235). Sharp will also be selling a case with a sholuder strap, so that you can pretend this phone is a dedicated camera. Considering the price of the device, however, it’s odd Sharp didn’t go with the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.
Alation on Wednesday launched Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome, an extension of the vendor’s platform that enables customers to discover data and use it to inform decisions without leaving Chrome.
A 2022 study by the Harvard Business Review found that the average employee in a Fortune 500 company toggles between applications and websites 1,200 times per day, which adds up to four hours per week and five weeks out of the year spent context-switching.
Alation Anywhere addresses that wasted time by saving users from having to toggle between applications and the vendor’s environment. Before launching Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome, the vendor previously released extensions of its platform for Slack, Microsoft Teams, Excel and Google Sheets.
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Given that Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome addresses time wasted switching between websites and the Alation environment and speeds access to Alation’s data catalog capabilities, it is a helpful addition to the vendor’s platform, according to Matt Aslett, an analyst at ISG’s Ventana Research.
“The primary goal of capabilities like Alation Anywhere is to accelerate data-driven decision-making,” he said. “It does this by facilitating access to governed and curated data from Alation Data Catalog via business productivity tools and applications. This reduces the need for context-switching, which can delay time to insight.”
Based in Redwood City, Calif., Alation is a data catalog specialist whose Data Intelligence Platform lets users integrate and organize data from disparate sources that can be used to train AI models as well as inform data products such as reports and dashboards.
Toggling between applications is an unpleasant fact.
There’s one application for email, another for instant messaging and collaboration, still another for analyzing data and many more for such tasks as creating presentations, customer relations management and enterprise resource planning.
As the Harvard Business Review’s report noted, more than an entire month of employees’ work year is wasted by switching from one application to another.
Alation has taken steps to reduce some of the lost time by context switching with its initial Alation Anywhere extensions. But more than on Slack and Teams, and more than on Excel and Google Sheets, most applications are now based on the web, according to Stewart Bond, an analyst at IDC.
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Chrome, meanwhile, is the most popular web browser. As a result, Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome addresses a need.
“The browser has become the interface from which most modern applications are accessed,” Bond said. “It takes away the need for people to toggle between the application being used in one tab, and Alation being used in another tab. It should save users time.”
But there’s more to extending Alation’s capabilities to the browser and other applications than just saving time, Bond continued.
By embedding analytics tools in common work applications, vendors, whether data catalog specialists such as Alation and Collibra or any other data management and analytics vendors, make it easier to consume data. When it’s right there, with no toggling necessary, employees are much more likely to use data as a tool than when they’re forced to seek it out.
“Extending Alation Anywhere to Google Chrome is going to deliver intelligence about data to users in their daily flow of work, in context to what they are doing within applications running in the browser,” Bond said. “I suspect [that will] increase effectiveness — having that intelligence available in context will be very useful when building analytical models and reviewing model results.”
“Embedding analytics and data management directly into everyday tools is essential for streamlining workflows and reducing friction,” he said. “With users accessing data from so many different applications and tools, [embedded analytics and data management] simplify access to trusted data and make it easier for users to unlock data-driven insights.”
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Regarding the impetus for adding the Alation Anywhere extensions, including the newest for Google Chrome, Malakar added that customer feedback and the vendor’s own monitoring of industry trends both played roles.
“[They are] a response to our commitment to meeting users within their workflows and in the tools they use most,” he said. “With the modern data stack continuously evolving, especially with AI embedding more deeply in workflows, our goal is to ensure data intelligence is always available where it drives the most value.”
Key features of Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome include the following, according to the vendor:
Streamlined data discovery enabled by Intelligent Search, a semantic-based search engine that employs AI to help users find relevant data for informing decisions and actions.
Metadata preview, a tool aimed at providing users with context about their data by automatically showing users previews of data assets in Snowflake’s Snowsight, a web-based interface, and Microsoft Power BI dashboards alongside Alation’s metadata.
Access within Chrome to standardized organizational terms in the Alation glossary to maintain consistency across reports, presentations and other assets.
Combined, the capabilities included in Alation’s extension for Google Chrome, following the launches of similar extensions for other applications, further Alation’s effort to improve access to data across organizations, according to Aslett.
“The release illustrates the ongoing evolution of the Alation strategy to provide increased access to governed and curated data throughout an enterprise,” he said.
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However, he noted that Alation is not alone among data integration vendors in extending its capabilities the browser. Informatica, Collibra, Qlik, DataGalaxy and Atlan provide browser-based access to their data catalogs, he said.
Going forward
With Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome now available, the vendor’s product development plans over the next year or so will continue to focus on improving its enablement of both technical and non-technical users to discover and curate the trusted data needed to inform decisions, according to Malakar.
That includes enterprise development of AI models and applications.
“As AI and data initiatives become central to enterprises, the demand for real-time, accessible, and reliable data will only increase,” Malakar said. “Alation is committed to evolving our platform to meet these needs … backed by the data they trust.”
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Bond, meanwhile, suggested that Alation needs to find ways to differentiate itself from its competition.
Alation doesn’t just compete with other data integration and data catalog specialists such as Collibra and Informatica. Tech giants AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft also offer data catalogs as part of their larger data management and analytics offerings.
While a browser-based extension is useful for Alation customers, it won’t help the vendor stand out given that numerous other vendors provide similar extensions for their own users. Conversely, the vendor’s recent launch of an AI governance suite not only serves a growing need but is also somewhat unique to date with AI only recently gaining enough widespread use in the enterprise to necessitate governance.
“Alation, not unlike other data intelligence vendors, needs to focus on unique differentiation as an enterprise data intelligence solution as they face competition from data platform vendors and hyperscale cloud vendors also building out data intelligence capabilities,” Bond said.
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Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management.
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