Sony just revealed a trio of PlayStation Plus Monthly Games for April and it's a pretty stacked lineup. These will all be playable on April 7 for subscribers on any tier. After downloading, the games will stay in a player's library as long as the subscription remains active.

First up, there's Lords of the Fallen for PS5. This is a sequel to 2014's Lords of the Fallen, despite having the same exact name. The 2023 release boasts a much larger world than the original, but similar fast-paced gameplay. It's an action RPG with nine character classes and hundreds of weapons to choose from. There's also a dual-world mechanic that's (sort of) like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It was generally well-reviewed and a success with players. There's another sequel scheduled for release later this year.

Tomb Raider I-III Remastered is a collection of ports first released back in 2024. These updated versions of old-school PlayStation classics boast updated graphics, with the ability to instantly switch back to the retro polygonal look. There's a new challenge mode that offers players the ability to replay levels with customized modifiers to complete achievements. This is a great entry point for Lara Croft fans who never got to play the originals. The collection is available on PS4 and PS5.

Sword Art Online Fractured Daydream is a live-service action RPG for PS5 owners with a heavy emphasis on co-op gameplay. Around 20 players can adventure simultaneously in teams of five parties scattered throughout the world. The story is a bit of a mess, pulling in characters from across the franchise's many entries. This approach sort of reminds me of something like Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, which uses narrative trickery to allow characters from multiple games to team up.

As always, the introduction of new titles means that some old games have gotta go. PS Plus members have until April 6 to download March's lineup, which include PGA Tour 2K25, Monster Hunter Rise, Slime Rancher 2 and The Elder Scrolls Online Collection: Gold Road.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/aprils-ps-plus-monthly-games-include-lords-of-the-fallen-and-a-trio-of-remastered-tomb-raider-ports-172105756.html?src=rss

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If you're feeling anxious about AI and what it means for the future of humanity, you should watch The AI Doc: Or, How I Became an Apocaloptimist. As I noted in my review, the film aims to deliver some clarity amid all the hype. Now that it's in theaters, we sat down with director Daniel Roher, who won an Oscar for his film Navalny, to dive deeper into his complicated feelings around AI.

The entire topic made him nervous, Roher said, so he decided to team up with similarly anxious colleagues to demystify AI using film. He describes the goal of the project to be a sort of "first date" with AI, a way to hear about its potential benefits from AI boosters, while also taking in the many negatives brought up by critics. It’s probably too late to stop AI entirely, but he thinks we can at least try to find ways to limit the worst impulses of the tech industry. 

"I wanted to make this movie because I was scared shitless, that's the crux of it," he said in an interview on the Engadget Podcast. "I didn't understand what AI was. I didn't understand why everyone was talking about it and why it seemed to be this thing that came outta the woodwork and all of a sudden, people were talking about it like it was the apocalypse or like it was gonna be the most optimistic, greatest thing ever."

Ultimately, Roher arrived at the term “apocaloptimist,” which balances the contradictory ideas that AI can both seriously harm society, and that we can still shape the future by criticizing or outright rejecting it. "It's a worldview. It's choosing not to buy into a binary that's asking us to see this as either apocalypse and the end of the world, or through the rose-colored glasses of unvarnished optimism, which is also sort of a fallacy," he said.

On the one hand, he's well aware the major players pushing AI are, at best, flawed. When I mentioned Marc Andreessen’s recent comments about proudly having no inner thoughts, Roher added,” They're just fucking weird. They're just nerds who became billionaires because they were born at the right time and they had the right interests. They're brilliant in their own way and they have abilities, but they don't understand what it is to exist. They don’t know what real human beings navigate and go through.They have a very narrow worldview that's callous and cold and calculated.” 

For many, the overnight ubiquity of this largely untested technology and the collective wealth and power of those supporting it means rampant negative externalities are all but guaranteed. But Roher's apocaloptimism (we'll see if the term quite catches on) chafes against cynicism and doomsaying. He points to OpenAI’s Sora video generation app, which was heavily criticized as a tool that could lead to more realistic deepfakes, but was unceremoniously killed last week.

"I think people were [made] uncomfortable by it, and good,” Roher said. “And, shame on OpenAI for releasing this thing without any thoughtfulness. I guess the low bar of like, at least they had the decency to pull back and retract it, but only after public condemnation." He added, "to the cynical people saying we're all fucked, I'm like, no fuck you, we're not. Collective action matters.” 

And notably, the entire goal is to think more deeply about the uses of technology than the people actually creating it. "These guys, when you actually sit down with them, they don't have clarity, they can't make you feel better. They don't know themselves. They're just motivated by the unbridled optimism of the greatest profit-making technology in the history of humanity. "

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-ai-docs-director-was-scared-shitless-by-ai-so-he-made-a-movie-about-it-145747961.html?src=rss

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Banijay is launching the Black Mirror Experience, starting with Montreal in May with additional locations to be announced in the future. Specifically, it will be produced by Banijay Live Studio, the new subsidiary of the production company that owns Black Mirror, in partnership with VR firm Univrse. The studio describes it as an interactive virtual reality experience that blends “physical space and VR… designed to blur the lines of fiction and reality in which you become the main character.” While it is based on the hit TV show, you apparently don’t need any prior knowledge of the series to be able to enjoy it.

The experience, which will span 60 minutes, can accommodate one person and groups of up to six people. Players 12-years-old and above are welcome to participate. It puts the players in the showroom of a fictional tech giant called Phaethon that’s unveiling the LifeAgent, a robotic AI companion that’s supposed to make their owners’ life easier. LifeAgent does a full-body scan of its owner so it would know their needs before they do. But in true Black Mirror fashion, “once it sees through [their] eyes, it knows exactly how to help… whether [they] asked it to or not.”

You can take part in the event at Infinity Experiences in Montreal, where you’ll be able to play it in French, English and Spanish.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/an-immersive-black-mirror-experience-is-launching-in-montreal-115915992.html?src=rss

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Two pieces of good gaming news today. First: Dinosaur Polo Club has shadow dropped a brand new game today. Second, it's available for free on both PC and Mac from Itch.io. The project is called Read the F*cking Manual, or RTFM, and it is a co-op game based on working in tech support.

Dinosaur Polo Club is known for previous games Mini Metro and Mini Motorways. Both are stellar examples of simple, elegant game design, and a small group within the company took this game jam concept from passion project to a fully fledged release. 

Per the description, "Players must work together — or not — in this atmospheric game of trust and communication." The premise is that one player, the Troubleshooter, has the manual for the console, while the other player, the Terminal Operator, has to describe what's on their screen, which stays out of the Troubleshooter's sight. The workplace setting seems particularly apropos, because this is the sort of team-building activity you might do on the job that could be really fun or downright torturous depending on how much you like your colleagues. And the whole experience seems to dance around the horror genre, because there seem to be different endings depending on how much each person stretches the truth about what's really happening.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/dinosaur-polo-club-has-released-a-new-co-op-game-and-its-free-214638400.html?src=rss

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Against all odds, A24’s adaptation of The Backrooms actually looks like a proper elevated horror movie. Hell, it’s even got Oscar winner Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave, Serenity) and Cannes favorite Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value) onboard. Judging from the film’s fist trailer, which combines The Backrooms creepypasta-born dread around liminal spaces, and A24’s slick horror aesthetic, you couldn’t tell that its director can’t even legally drink in the US yet. Yes folks, Kane Parsons is just 20.

Parsons, AKA Kane Pixels, made a splash four years ago with his original Backrooms shorts, the first of which has amassed over 73 million views on YouTube. Those were relatively simple episodes created in Blender, but they did an admirable job of feeling genuinely creepy. More recently, Parsons has also dabbled in horror shorts with his series The Oldest View.

While Parsons certainly has a ton of internet clout behind him, he also has a strong eye for slow-burn horror. This trailer alone is making me feel uneasy about heading into my dimly lit basement office. He also won’t be the first internet creator to reach cinemas this year. Markiplier’s adaptation of the indie game Iron Lung was particularly notable, since he funded both the production and theatrical distribution on his own.

The Backrooms joins Genki Kawamura’s adaptation of the game Exit 8 as another new horror film about spooky liminal spaces. It’ll be interesting to see how the two compare. The former started as 4chan stories and images around eerily empty buildings, while the latter was a game where you slowly walked through a repetitive Tokyo subway. There’s more room for Parsons to turn The Backrooms into a narrative of his own, whereas Exit 8 is somewhat restricted by the original game.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-backrooms-trailer-combines-creepypasta-dread-and-a24-prestige-horror-213602238.html?src=rss

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Palworld developer Pocketpair just announced a bizarre spinoff called Palworld: More Than Just Pals. This looks to be a dating sim with horror elements in which you can romance the various Pals from the original game.

The gameplay description suggests it's set at a mysterious school, and players can not only fall in love with these creatures, but also "dismantle and eat them." The original game already let you eat Pals, but the ability to romance the gun-toting animals is new.

We don't know too much about the specifics of gameplay, though there is a trailer. Developer Pocketpair insists this is not an April Fool's Day joke, despite today's date. There's an active Steam page complete with system requirements, for whatever that's worth. We don't have a release date or price for this one just yet.

This isn't the first Palworld spinoff. The company recently announced Palworld: Palfarm, which is a farming sim where players can punish Pals that aren't working hard enough. There's no release date for that one yet either.

The original Palworld has proven to be a huge hit. It's a cheeky and violent take on Pokémon that has attracted plenty of negative attention from Nintendo. There's no way to date or eat Pokémon in any of Nintendo's games, though Pokopia lets players move in with the creatures and sleep next to them. Many people are particularly fond of turning Machoke into a house husband, who is basically just a big and buff man.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/a-palworld-horror-themed-dating-sim-spinoff-is-on-the-way-185429664.html?src=rss

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Meta has agreed to "substantially reduce” its use of the PG-13 ratings system in relation to its Teen Accounts on Instagram starting April 15.

Last year, the Motion Picture Association objected to Meta directly referencing its movie content rating, which cautions parents against letting their pre-teens engage with certain media. In a cease-and-desist letter seen by The Wall Street Journal at the time, the MPA said that Meta claiming its teen accounts were comparable to PG-13 ratings was "literally false and highly misleading."

The MPA argued that its guidelines for the established movie-ratings system and Meta’s own explanation of the revamped accounts for minors did not align, and that drawing a link could have a detrimental effect on the MPA’s public image by association. It also said that Meta’s system seemingly relies heavily on AI to determine what younger users see on the social media platform.

When introducing the changes in 2025, Meta said that the risk of seeing "suggestive content" or hearing certain language in a movie rated 13+ was a good way of framing something similar happening on an Instagram teen account. It added that it was doing all it could to keep such instances to a minimum. 

Meta has now updated that initial blog post about the changes after coming to an agreement with the MPA, adding a lengthy disclaimer that reads, in part, "there are lots of differences between social media and movies. We didn’t work with the MPA when updating our content settings, they’re not rating any content on Instagram, and they’re not endorsing or approving our content settings in any way."

Meta goes on to explain that it drew "inspiration" from the MPA guidance given its familiarity with parents, as well as feedback it had received from parents, and will continue to do so. The difference is that it won’t make the connection so explicitly in its communications going forward.

"Today’s agreement clearly distinguishes the MPA’s film ratings from Instagram’s Teen Account content moderation tools," said Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the MPA. "While we welcome efforts to protect kids from content that may not be appropriate for them, this agreement helps ensure that parents do not conflate the two systems – which operate in very different contexts. The MPA is proud of the trust we have built with parents for nearly sixty years with our film rating system, and we will continue to do everything we can to protect that trust."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-will-substantially-reduce-describing-instagram-teen-accounts-as-pg-13-175912683.html?src=rss

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Adults of a certain age will no doubt remember The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, a cartoon from 1989 that starred our favorite sibling plumbers decades before they would take over multiplexes with an animated film franchise. The broadcast channel MeTV Toons has begun airing old episodes of the show, likely to trade on the buzz emanating from the pending theatrical release of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. There's just one problem. The episodes seem to have been sloppified by an AI upscaling algorithm, according to a report by Kotaku.

The original series wasn't exactly a visual delight. It was a cash grab cartoon from the 1980s. However, it looks even worse now. MeTV seems to have run the footage through a bargain bin AI upscaler and the results are, in a word, weird.

Everything looks smoothed over in an off-putting way, with some characters looking markedly different from the original footage. Many of the episodes are available on YouTube, so it's easy to do your own comparisons.

The upscaler also seems to have changed the title card to "The Suele Mario Bros. Super Show." These AI tools have never been great with visual representations of written text, but you'd think someone at the station would have given things a look over. Engadget has reached out to MeTV to ask what happened and we'll update this post when we find out.

For the uninitiated, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show ran for just a single season. But this was 1989, so a full 65 episodes aired throughout the year. Seasons didn't mess around back then. It was famous for its live-action segments that starred professional wrestler "Captain" Lou Albano as Mario. It also turned into a Legend of Zelda cartoon every Friday. There's where the famous "well, excuse me princess" meme comes from.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-super-mario-bros-cartoon-is-back-but-looks-really-weird-thanks-to-ai-171536332.html?src=rss

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