Apple's Siri AI will be powered by Gemini Amazon's upcoming live-action TV adaptation has cast Ryan Hurst as its Kratos. Sony announced the casting today on X with a brief post and an image of both Hurst and Kratos in full scowl mode. Hurst is already sporting a very Kratos-style beard, so he's already got the right vibe going for him. He has past credits on familiar shows such as and . The upcoming Amazon series also isn't his first rodeo acting in this universe; Hurst voiced Thor in the video game .

While 2022 may not have enjoyed as many AAA releases as in past years, the ones that weren't delayed into 2023 were stellar and the indie development scene more than made up for the lack of big-budget titles. Some of our favorite releases this year came from small, ambitious teams that delivered fresh ideas. As is tradition, the Engadget team came together to extol the virtues of our favorite releases from the past 12 months. Bayonetta 3 is a delicious amplification of the series' most ridiculous themes. It indulges in absurdity without disrupting the rapid-fire combat or Bayonetta's unrivaled sense of fashion and wit. Bayonetta 3 is joyful, mechanically rich and full of action, plus it allows players to transform into a literal hell train in order to take down massive beasts bent on destroying the multiverse. The Bayonetta series just keeps getting weirder, but that doesn't mean it's losing its sense of satisfying gameplay along the way. In the franchise's third installment, Bayonetta is powerful, confident and funny; she's a drag queen in a universe loosely held together by witchcraft, and the chaos of this combination is truly magical. Sure, you've played Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Hades and The Binding of Isaac – but what if you could play all of them at once, in a single adorable demonic package? Cult of the Lamb is part social and farming simulator, part dungeon-crawling roguelike and all-around fantastic. After being sacrificed and resurrected, you're instructed by a grand, dark deity to start your own cult, managing worship services, agriculture, cooking, marriages, deaths and much more.

"I think a lot of people going in [to the reboot] had felt like Kratos was a pretty irredeemable character," said Matt Sophos, narrative lead on the latest entry in the series, "God of War Ragnarok." "Going into the last one and then ['Ragnarok'], you know, we evolved that hopefully in most people's eyes." Longtime fans were quick to portray the franchise's tonal shift as the "daddification" of Kratos; the change corresponded with the introduction of his son, Atreus, who accompanies his father through the realms of Norse mythology.

Video games are nothing without their main characters. Unlike movies or TV, video games are a place where fans get to play the protagonist--help save the world, their friends, and themselves. It's not essential that players agree with every move their character makes. But it's generally key that they have some kind of emotional connection with the character. It's true that video game heroes frequently fit into a narrow set of molds, but generally their cookie-cutter personalities are at least not grating. In other words, no one wants to play the asshole.

You can attribute much of the PlayStation 4's amazing run of the last seven years to its exclusive titles. While Nintendo remains the most prolific producer of high quality exclusive console games, Sony amassed considerable might during the PlayStation 4′s run, acquiring acclaimed studios that would go on to produce titles that would sweep awards shows. It's why Microsoft has invested in its own studios, including last year's atomic announcement that Xbox now owns Bethesda Game Studios, the creators of the "Elder Scrolls" series. Gene Park: "Bloodborne" was a game so good, it helped me completely get over my last, serious and long-term relationship. It was early 2015, and there were going to be some big changes in our lives. I was looking to move out of Hawaii, while she wanted to expand her local business's footprint. Our relationship was already on the rocks before "Bloodborne" released, and we'd already had some legendary battles and arguments between us, you know, the kind that end in screaming matches and tearful apologies.

The next year will be pivotal for the Air Force's effort to acquire a new class of autonomous drones, as industry teams compete for a chance to build a fleet of robotic wingmen that will soon undergo operational experimentation. The "Skyborg" program is one of the service's top science-and-technology priorities under the "Vanguard" initiative to deliver game-changing capabilities to its warfighters. The aim is to acquire relatively inexpensive, attritable unmanned aircraft that can leverage artificial intelligence and accompany manned fighter jets into battle. "I expect that we will do sorties where a set number are expected to fly with the manned systems, and we'll have crazy new [concepts of operation] for how they'll be used," Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper said during an online event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. The platforms might even be called upon to conduct kamikaze missions.

The PlayStation 4 has dominated the video game market since its release six years ago. Sure, Microsoft's Xbox One is more powerful than the PlayStation 4, but Sony's console spent this generation producing incredible games. Putting software above hardware has been a winning strategy for Sony and it's sold more than 100 million consoles since the PlayStation 4's release in 2013. With more than 2,300 games for the system, it can be hard to pick which game to play. But TIME has you covered.

Rule-based Anomaly Detection: This is already framed by specific set of rules that describe an anomaly and assigns the thresholds and limits. We typically rely on the experience of industry experts whose findings are ideal to detect known anomalies. These anomalies are familiar anomalies to us and we can easily recognize, whether it is normal or abnormal. One of the major flaws of rule-based systems is that they don't detect anomalies automatically as patterns change. To learn new patterns, a new model would have to be built each time.

In an industry now in its mid-to-late 30s, and still with a predominantly male workforce, the glut of recent blockbuster video games featuring father-child relationships surely reflects the preoccupations of the men who make them. God of War is the latest specimen: a game in which a monosyllabic muscleman is on a journey to scatter his late wife's ashes on the tallest mountain in Norse myth, while accompanied by his young son. Previously the God of War series, which debuted in 2005, had little time to explore the emotional landscape of its testosterone-pumped protagonist Kratos, whose only downtime from tearing the balls from mythological monsters was spent gruffly shagging mute slave girls. God of War was always something akin to Marvel does Greek mythology (which, to be fair, was pretty much how Homer did Greek mythology): all brutal set-pieces that, with their lingering camera angles and splattering money shots, treated violence as pornography. It was a peculiarly American vision for the mid-2000s video game action blockbuster, one that has aged quicker than its protagonist's tribal tattoos.

With the arrival of consoles like the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One X, as well as long-awaited games such as Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it's not an exaggeration to say 2017 was a landmark year for video games. But as the year draws to a close, it's time to look forward to the games that have been promised for 2018. Games with unannounced release timeframes have not been included. This list also excludes remakes and ports.] Rockstar's epic Western open-world adventure is finally getting a follow-up in the form of a prequel.