One of the most engaging aspects of virtual reality is its ability to appeal to our most basic emotions. Some games do this by showing off immense scale, or putting a character so close you can almost feel them. Crytek’s The Climb, on the other hand, relies on the nearly universal fear of heights, and it’s now available for you to try on the Oculus Store.
The Climb takes VR gamers to the tallest rock outcroppings and toughest climbing passes, all created in the gorgeous Crytek engine. More than just making it up the side of the mountain, gamers can face off against the ghosts of their friends, take on unique challenges, or just explore the 3D landscapes in the simplified tourist mode.
While a rock climbing game with an Xbox controller might not sound totally mind-blowing at first, Crytek’s effort shows off some impressive changes to its UI and control scheme that other developers are likely to follow in other titles. Rather than an HUD, virtual hands sweat, and the chalk wears away, with a watch conveying relevant information that’s not otherwise shown.
The shoulder buttons control the grip, which makes for an interesting cognitive consonance. Squeezing the trigger squeezes the rock, and before long you’re clutching the controller for dear life. Using your head to aim your next grab also means there’s a simplicity to the controls, which lets you focus on your route and your grip.
More importantly, The Climb marks Crytek’s first full-blown VR game, ascending from the tech demos and short films that helped the Crysis and Ryse: Son of Rome developer move into the new medium. It’s certainly an ambitious first offering, and one that gamers will really be able to sink their teeth, and hands, into.
If you’re ready to take on the mountain, Crytek’s The Climb is available now in the Oculus Store for $50, but you’ll need a Rift to play it. The game will add support for the Oculus Touch controllers down the road as part of a free update.
After five years with Apple silicon, from the original M1 MacBook Air to the M5 MacBook Air released earlier this year, I've watched these chips mature not just on the spec sheet, but in real-world workflows and overall efficiency.
The new M6 chip might sound like a routine generational upgrade, but it's the company's first chip built on a 2nm manufacturing process, which brings meaningful improvements over previous Apple chips.
Gemini Notebook’s mobile app now has a built-in recorder for capturing lectures and meetings as sources. You can record directly where you’ll use the material, skipping the separate recording app and the file upload afterward.
Google announced the feature on X, highlighting classroom lectures and team meetings as potential uses. It also works for capturing your own thoughts, so you can talk through an idea and bring that explanation into your notebook while it’s still fresh.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?