This RPG turns my favorite part of Stardew Valley into an entire game - Related to dead,, valley, samsung, stardew, aren’t

The Dark Universe is dead, but the Universal Monsters aren’t

The big, bad count of this winter’s Nosferatu goes by Orlok, but you know his real name. (The estate of Bram Stoker sure did back in the 1920s, when they sued [website] Murnau for copyright infringement.) And though the title character of Wolf Man isn’t Lawrence Talbot, he hails from the same lycanthropic lineage that had Lon Chaney Jr. howling at the full moon. Depending on where you live, and if you hurry, you can go to the movies right now and see both Dracula and the Wolfman on the big screen once again. What a time to be alive or undead!

These two movies, both from Universal (or at least its art-house subsidiary, Focus attributes), are merely the start of a classic monster mash in the making. Later this year, we’ll get not one but two new versions of Frankenstein — a musical with Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, and a lavish Guillermo del Toro adaptation starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi. Meanwhile, James Wan, our reigning mogul of multiplex spookiness, has his eyes on more icons from the house Dracula built: He’s stated to be directing a reboot of Creature from the Black Lagoon and producing the latest attempt to crack the sarcophagus of The Mummy.

The Universal Monsters, in other words, are having a moment. Not since Pepsi made them the unlikely stars of a 1990s advertising campaign — nearly turning Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff into beyond-the-grave spokesmonsters for Doritos — have the most famous fiends of filmland enjoyed such a renaissance of visibility. What this bumper crop of creature- (and Creature-) related projects also represents is a rebound from one of the failed franchise master plans of the last decade. Soft box office for Wolf Man aside, we’re seeing a resurrection in the making. The Dark Universe is dead. Long live the Dark Universe!

If a thousand social media jokes don’t ring a bell, the Dark Universe was Universal’s short-lived plan to give its roster of Golden Age beasties the Avengers treatment via a series of movies that would reunite them all on screen. This aborted, Marvel-biting attempt to build a new franchise from old intellectual property is best remembered today for the prematurity of its splashy roll-out: Overly confident in the audience’s thirst to see a bunch of Hollywood monsters hobnob, Universal put the cart before the horse-drawn carriage and commissioned a now-infamous photoshoot for Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Sofia Boutella, and Russell Crowe. That publicity still, and the official tweet promoting it, outlived the plan by several years.

It wasn’t such an out-there idea, though. You could say Universal beat Marvel to the whole “shared universe” thing by nearly a century. In the 1940s, the studio collided its legendary monsters in movies like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, and House of Dracula… before pitting them against Abbott and Costello at the jokey end of that era. Over the decades that followed, Universal would revive this crossover fun — getting the gang back together for the Goonies crowd in 1987’s The Monster Squad, sending them after Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing in the junky 2004 blockbuster that bore his name.

Last decade’s Dark Universe sputtered out for possibly the same reason that a Van Helsing series did: It began on a bum note. Or two, actually. Before Cruise’s misbegotten The Mummy put a nail in the coffin, the lavish Luke Evans origin story Dracula Untold gave the Dark Universe its first false start. These were forgettable action distractions that audiences ignored. You can’t launch a cinematic universe with a flop. You need an Iron Man-sized hit to whet appetites for more.

The Dark Universe died before it really got started. But you can’t keep a good monster down. From the grave of that failure has risen a new line of vehicles for Universal’s veteran fright class. The studio bounced back quickly from The Mummy (and the line of interconnected sequels it promised) with a scary standalone: Leigh Whannell’s sharply suspenseful take on The Invisible Man, which rebooted the most canonically scummy of Universal Monsters for a new era in a much smarter way. There’s no groundwork for future entries in that movie, no Nick Fury figure teasing a new world of gods and monsters. The Invisible Man confirmed that audiences would plunk down for old-school scares without the promise of a bigger saga uniting them.

In the years since, Universal has shown no interest in trying to play malevolent matchmaker again (beyond the recent announcement that they’d be reviving the “Dark Universe” brand for a theme park event). Instead, the enterprise has experimented with self-contained vehicles for its terror troupe. Dracula, in particular, has been busy the last few years. Before Nosferatu scored a genuine hit for the bloodsucker under his German alias, Universal rolled out two novel spins on Stoker’s novel in the same year: a glib action-comedy for beleaguered familiar Renfield, and a feature-length dramatization of one chapter of the book, affectionately nicknamed Dracula on a Boat by a bunch of keyboard wiseacres who didn’t take that voyage.

Neither Demeter nor Renfield were successes. Nor was last month’s Wolf Man, a disappointing follow-up to The Invisible Man from Whannell. No matter. Universal (or other studios, like Warner Bros. and Netflix, who are bankrolling those modern takes on The Modern Prometheus, which will open later this year) can afford to muck with the monster mold and roll the dice a few times when not devoting a Marvel-sized budget to these fearsome attractions. After all, horror need not cost a fortune to draw a crowd. Fur, fake fangs, and neck bolts come relatively cheap. And when you’re not trying to engineer a star-studded, multi-entry, record-breaking franchise, there’s no great loss in one film failing. Shake it off and try again.

The Dark Universe’s miscalculation was thinking that some of cinema’s oldest villains needed to be superheroes. That was a square peg in a round hole. There’s a way to adapt these monsters for a new generation without turning them into something they’re not. The Invisible Man, which brought the translucent menace into a new era of tech-bro misogyny, handily demonstrated as much. And in the popularity of Nosferatu, a rather deliberately old-fashioned slab of gothic horror, one can see the durability of the original Universal Monster appeal — a scariness that maybe never goes entirely out of fashion, probably because it channels deeper fears of death, disease, and carnality. Nosferatu’s healthy box office is proof that Dracula can still sell tickets, provided he’s allowed to be his horny self.

The Count and his Old Hollywood labelmates always come back for another bite. Pepsi partnership aside, they’re more like the Coca-Cola Classic of horror: dependable, unimprovable, and immune to changing tastes. Hammer, the venerated British production house, revived the whole gang in the 1960s — a much more successful Dark Universe, made across the pond from the studio system that made stars out of the lot. And the early 1990s offered a bumper crop of lavish remakes and reimaginings, directed by big names like Francis Ford Coppola and Kenneth Branagh, and featuring big stars like Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson. Half a century after their heyday, Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man were suddenly box-office players again. We’re overdue for the cycle to repeat.

But will we ever see the Universal Monsters together again? Will Frankenstein once more meet the Wolf Man? Will Dracula reopen his house to some famed frenemies from the studio payroll? Oh, probably — the shared universe concept isn’t dead, even if the Dark Universe is. In the meantime, it’s enough to have so many of these ghouls back in theaters or on their way. Hell, come autumn, we might even get a chance to do a double feature of dueling Frankensteins, a true Barbenheimer-grade event for viewers of a certain spooky persuasion. Who needs a Dark Universe when multiple Transylvanian terrors are coming to a theater near you?

Nosferatu and Wolf Man are now playing in select theaters. For more of [website] Dowd’s writing, visit his Authory page.

Table of Contents Table of Contents The hack An odd recommendation engine.

I have a massive Steam library, and like most PC gamers I know, I’m always ...

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs are here, and with them come some absolutely insane price tags. Fancy a top-of-the-range RTX 5090? That’ll be $2,000, plea...

You can have a ton of people on your PS5, ensuring that you and your entire friend and family group can access their content on the console. However, y...

This RPG turns my favorite part of Stardew Valley into an entire game

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a good video game must be in want of a fishing minigame. The time-honored side activity has been featured in everything from Final Fantasy XV to Hello Kitty: Island Adventure as a brief reprieve from the main story. The trouble is that whenever a fishing minigame pops up I find myself neglecting everything else, even saving the world, in favor of casting a line. That is, unless the fishing minigame sucks.

Indie RPG Sea Fantasy is here to solve that problem. Developed by METASLA, Sea Fantasy takes the fishing minigame and turns it into the main event. Gone are turn-based battles, random encounters, and multi-colored mages. There is still an appropriately nonsense story about saving the world from it’s imminent destruction, but this time you’ll be doing it through the power of fishing. Don’t ask too many questions as to how that works. While Sea Fantasy’s charming pixel-graphics pay homage to classic RPGs, the mechanical core of the game draws inspiration from an unexpected source: Stardew Valley.

The ever-popular life sim eschews the belief that fishing is a leisurely activity and therefore should be simple, which makes it the perfect pick for METSLA to take guidance from. Rather than the one or two button press affairs found in many RPG minigames, Sea Fantasy requires skill and perseverance. Timing is everything. A marker moves along a horizontal bar in which a target zone of varying size is placed. Stopping the marker when it is in the target zone deals damage to any potential catches. Depending on the creature (called SeaAZ) the target zone may be much smaller and damage won’t make as big a dent in the health bar. There is also a countdown timer that warns that the enemy will bite back with its own damage dealing attack. This leads to long drawn out battles between you and the SeaAZ that feel like they were pulled straight out of The Old Man and the Sea.

Don’t expect to reel in these monsters right away. Instead, Sea Fantasy‘s early hours pit players against small fish which grant experience every time a successful catch is made. Each level grants skill points to use on upgrading stats like attack, health, and how large the target zone is during fishing. Rods and hooks, which can be mixed and matched to create unique loadouts tailored to each SeaAZ, also improve stats on a case by case situation.

This turns Sea Fantasy’s fishing into a much more strategic experience that encourages smart distribution of skill points as well as proper preparation of equipment. That palpable sense of steady improvement that comes from grinding and learning the ins and outs finally pays off when I manage to land an elusive catch I’ve been hunting. Even with the right gear and a high level, capturing SeaAZ never turns into an easy task thanks to constant twists on the core fishing loop.

One of the only flaws of Stardew Valley’s fishing is the lack of variety. While the game ramps up how fast and erratic fish move on the bar, they all have the same basic behavior. Sea Fantasy avoids a similar pitfall by once again pulling from its RPG inspirations, specifically how those games design varied enemies. One SeaZ will make bubbles appear on the fishing bar that, if not hit with the marker before a countdown reaches zero, will explode and deal damage. Another SeaAZ makes you hit one of three rocks with your marker to determine if the target will be smaller, larger, or the same as it usually is. These are only two of the 104 unique SeaAZ that populate Sea Fantasy’s watery world.

Sea Fantasy‘s decision to weave traditional RPG design into fishing is made in service of one thing: excitement. The enemy of any good fishing game, mini or otherwise, is boredom. The second the player feels like making a successful catch is too easy or too monotonous, you’ve lost them. Sea Fantasy works overtime to keep you on the hook. Even the short main story (which takes roughly eight hours) is in service of this philosophy. It’s long enough to teach you the fundamentals of Sea Fantasy’s systems, but doesn’t overstay its welcome. This means you have more time for what really matters: reeling in the next big catch.

Table of Contents Table of Contents The Lost City (2022) Miss Congeniality (2000) Top Five (2014).

February is in the running for the most romantic mo...

Table of Contents Table of Contents Price Catalog size Sonos app integration Sonos compatibility Spatial audio On-the-go Does hi-res on Sonos matter? ...

At the Information Systems Europe (ISE) 2025 audiovisual showcase in Barcelona today, home theater projector makers Optoma unveiled its latest stunner...

This terrible Samsung camera ruined my day out

Table of Contents Table of Contents Meet the ST72 Day out, ruined Telephoto is a no-no A reminder of how lucky we are.

Digging through a drawer in my office shortly after the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra arrived, I came across a relic. It was a compact digital camera also made by Samsung, which I’d purchased on a whim before a trip nearly a decade ago.

I haven’t used it since then, and seeing as I was already testing a Samsung camera, why not add another to the list? The next day I was headed out to take photos for my upcoming S25 Ultra review, and I’m so glad I wasn’t relying on the old Samsung camera to document my time, as it would have ruined it.

Picking the Samsung ST72 camera up again reminded me why I bought it: its size. It’s less than half the size of the Galaxy S25 Ultra and I can easily carry it around in my pocket or bag, barely knowing it’s there. There’s a sensibly sized screen on the back, a physical two-stage shutter release on the top, and it even has a zoom feature.

I looked up the rest of the specification to compare it to the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The main 1/[website] sensor has [website] and a 5x optical zoom, plus it has that 3-inch LCD screen on the back. It’s not quite up there with the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s 200MP main camera, 50MP wide-angle, and two telephoto cameras, but it can (on paper) match one of the optical zoom modes.

The problem was, I couldn’t remember if the ST72 took good photos or not. I know I used it on a trip, but looking back most of my memories from it were captured with my iPhone at the time. Was this because the ST72 took rubbish pictures? I found out, and wasn’t quite prepared for just how awful it really is.

The Samsung ST72 came out in 2013 but you can still find it for sale today on eBay, and for a temptingly low price. I certainly wasn’t approaching this comparison as a way to offer serious buying advice, as I’d expect the $1,300 Galaxy S25 Ultra to take advanced photos than the $120 ST72 camera. What I didn’t expect was to see such a huge difference, and it really reveals how far things have come.

Lets start out with a basic, simple photograph of a church on a very bright winter day. It’s staggering just how poor the ST72’s photo is, with messy blurring and smudging in the foreground, unsteady focus throughout, a complete lack of detail, unwanted noise, and no visual pop at all. Even looked at on its own, few would be pleased with the ST72’s photo and likely never return to it in the future.

Compare it with the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s photo, and there’s no contest. I love the S25 Ultra’s colors and visual excitement, and the way it truly captured the wonderful winter blue sky. The second photo displays a sunset after a day of rain, except I’d have to tell you that was why I took the photo if the only evidence I had was the ST72’s image. Its f/[website] aperture doesn’t help here at all, and it’s unable to capture the depth of color visible to the naked eye. The S25 Ultra’s photo looks great, and no such verbal explanation of the scene would be required with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The f/[website] aperture means it’s far more capable in low or difficult lighting, and although the photo isn’t perfect — it’s a little smudgy and noisy — it’s obvious why I took the photo, and with a little editing it would be really beautiful.

At this point I’d only seen the ST72’s photos on the camera’s LCD screen, and they didn’t look great then. However, I convinced myself the screen may not be doing the actual photos justice, and continued to take photos during the day. The ST72 also has an optical zoom feature, just like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and thinking back this may have been a reason I chose it. Even then, when I wasn’t all that interested or knowledgeable about cameras or photography, I clearly wanted the versatility of a capable zoom. However, I was to be very disappointed by the results.

There’s such a huge difference between the two 5x zoom photos of the bridge, it’s practically impossible to believe the pair technically used the same feature. Picking the ST72’s photo apart seems like a waste of time, as even if you’d never seen a photograph before, ever, you’d still know it was rubbish. It has more in common with digital zoom photos taken with an aging smartphone than it does with the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s capable 5x optical zoom.

Did the ST72 fail completely? There was one photo where I think it did a slightly improved job than the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Taken inside a shop, the ST72’s photo of the budding flowers wrapped in paper is brighter and less punchy, in a good way, than the S25 Ultra’s photo. The colors are natural, the white balance effective, and there’s a decent level of detail too. The S25 Ultra’s photo is over saturated, and I’m not sure it got the exposure right.

However, one photo cannot save the Samsung ST72, and neither can its admittedly lovely size and shape. It’s absolutely not the Samsung camera anyone should be using in 2025. If my day out was one where I wanted to truly capture memories, it would have ruined them. It’s really surprising just how much difference there is between a digital camera from 10 years ago and today’s smartphones. Sure, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is a lot more expensive, but I think all but the very worst smartphone camera today would still beat the ST72 in a back-to-back test.

It highlights how spoiled we are by what our phone’s cameras are capable of, and after using the ST72 again, I assume I hid it away all those years ago because I was distinctly unimpressed by its ability. At the time I would have had the choice of the Apple iPhone 5S, the Nokia Lumia 1020, and the LG G2 smartphones, and I am almost certain all would gave taken considerably enhanced photos than the ST72.

The little Samsung camera is headed back to its drawer, where it’ll serve as a reminder of how lucky we are having such excellent cameras with us all day, because based on the actual photos it takes, that’s all it’s good for. As for the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s camera, it’s looking great, but other more relevant comparisons reveal if it genuinely has what it takes to take on, and beat, its peers.

London-based HR operations platform Zelt has raised a $6M funding round led by Nauta, with participation from Venrex and Episode 1.

Zurich-based Oxyle has raised $[website] in a funding round to scale its breakthrough solution to destroy PFAS from wastewater.

Table of Contents Table of Contents How to play Strands Hint for today’s Strands puzzle Today’s Strand answers.

Strands is a brand new daily puzzle fr......