Daily Archives: October 1, 2021

Much has been made of brain-computer interfaces and the singularity, with claims that our minds could be linked to cyberspace reaching an almost religious fervor at times. Samsung has added fuel to that fire by announcing a method to "copy and paste" the brain'sneuronal connection map onto a computer chip.

By doing this, they believe they could "create a memory chip that approximates the unique computing traits of the brain low power, facile learning, adaptation to environment, and even autonomy and cognition that have been beyond the reach of current technology," Samsung explains in a press statement.

The method, detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature, uses a nanoelectrode array that effectively enters a large number of neurons and records their electrical signals. These recordings are then used to compile the neuronal wiring map by detailing the strength of different neural connections. This 'copy' of the brain's neural connections can then essentially be 'pasted' into a memory chip such as a solid-state drive (SSD) or intoresistive random access memories (RRAM). Each memory would be programmed so that "its conductance representsthe strength of each neuronal connection in the copied map," the tech firm says in its release.

According to Samsung, this approach would be a return to attempts to reverse engineer the brain, which started with the advent ofneuromorphic engineering in the 1980s. Of course, the human brain's complexity is incredibly hard to mimic. While the Samsung team has laid down the foundations for their approach, we are still very far from seeing a neuromorphic chip that would need the approximately 100 trillion memory units in order to truly provide a like-for-like representation of all of the brain's neurons and synaptic links.

The new paper could eventually lead to more human-like artificial intelligence and it could also have applications for the linked field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that allow users to control computers with their mind. In 2019, Elon Musk gave a presentation for his company Neuralink in which he explained that its BCI technology could one day help to treat brain diseases and that it could mitigate the existential threat of artificial intelligence "if you can't beat em, join them," Musk wrote on Twitter last year regarding Neuralink's mission statement.

The rest is here:

Samsung Wants to 'Copy and Paste' the Brain Into a Chip - Interesting Engineering

Hello, October! A new month means a new Folks All Reading Together challenge, and this months is to read a play or poetry collection. Sometimes poetry is truly the best way to express a particular feeling, experience, or thought. Poetry has seen a bit of a resurgence in popular culture in recent years with the boom in readership via Instagram. But whether youre a poetry buff or not sure where to start, these eight collections published in 2021 will definitely hit the spot. Whether youre just looking for your next read or trying to complete this months FART challenge, were sure one of these collections will be exactly what youre looking for.

Buy on London Review Bookshop

This collection of the erotic experience, written by a variety of poets from the UK and around the world, explores sex, sexuality, orgasm, and sensuality. If youre looking for poems that celebrate the sexual experience of the body in a safe and curious space, then this is the collection for you.

Buy on Amazon Buy on Bookshop

In Dawson City, Canada, the Pit is a hub of the community a dive bar in the far north. Borins collection is set here, and through the lens of the bars regulars, staff, and visitors to the rooms upstairs, Borin explores addiction, community, and belonging.

Buy on Amazon

Inheritance is far more than it seems beyond possessions, our inheritance includes our memories, culture, traditions, and the people who have made up our experiences.A Blood Condition looks at inheritance and the body and at how national-scale events can be reflected in the singularity of one person.

Buy on Amazon

An entire lifetime is collected between the pages ofA Square of Sunlight. While every poem is touched with humor, they also sometimes turn to the serious. From the minutiae of the everyday experience to world events like the assassination of JFK, Coxs words capture the truth of what it means to be human.

Buy on Amazon Buy on Bookshop

Originally published in 2016 but re-released this year, Burning in This Midnight Dreamis a poetic account of the residential school experience in Canada. The collection reflects on the pain wrought on Halfes family as well as the continued effects those experiences have on the survivors and their families.

Buy from University of Queensland Press

Chongs ninth poetry collection continues her exploration of the sensual and the emotional. She confronts the struggles of infertility at the same time as the sometimes difficult relationship between mothers and daughters. Chongs tightly controlled verse walks the line between the flesh of the body and the violence of a knife.

Buy on Amazon Buy on Bookshop

Campbells collection is all about the many wonderful spaces created by Indigenous women. From DMs and orgasms to hot tea and aunties telling funny stories, Ned Nez looks at the jubilant, complex lives of Indigenous women in the modern world.

Buy from Tin Press

Rachel Longs award-winning collection of poetry, My Darling from the Lions, is told in three parts, each full of poems dealing with growing up, falling in love, and girlhood. Long dissects the divide between sexual identity and cultural inheritance, familial shame and modern culture. Beyond that, the cover is to die for!

More:

FART Recommendations: Eight Poetry Collections Released This Year - MuggleNet

Software is eating the world, Marc Andreessen so famously observed in 2011. Yet now in 2021, its time to add a new phrase to his famous truism: and artificial intelligence is eating software.

Clearly, artificial intelligence will alter the software business at every level: how applications will function, how theyll evolve, even how theyre sold. But likely the most revolutionary of these changes is how applications are created.

The AI technology driving this change is called various things, but the phrase AI-Augmented software engineering is as good as any. Youll see it perched at the top of Gartners chart of emerging technologies:

What is AI-Augmented software development? In short: its a system of development tools and platforms with AI built in that enables exponentially faster and better app creation than hand coding or traditional dev tools.

Among other advantages, the AI-driven system does the grunt work of laying out code; it can even predict or suggest code frameworks.

Perhaps most significant, AI enables less technically-inclined people to create or upgrade applications. Opening the gates of software creation to non-techies is a big disrupter they vastly outnumber the slender cohort of skilled devs. While skilled developers will move faster with AI, the large pool of non-devs could provide a generational push to innovation.

Note that Gartner puts AI-Augmented software engineering at the very peak of inflated expectations. To be sure, this idea is (mostly) still a hope for the future, and has limits even in best case.

The problem is that writing software is like any upper-end intellectual endeavor: the judgment and nuance of the human mind are required for top work. Writing software is creative, as any good dev will tell you. Just as a song cant be written by a computer (though song-like music can), a complex, new piece of software still cant be coded by an AI system.

On the other hand, an AI system learns prodigiously, so it can suggest paths that might elude the most creative human. An AI-augmented software program takes in a torrent of data; it gains knowledge (or at least data) far faster and more comprehensively than humans. It cant make the leaps of human developers, yet it can lay out patterns and fill in decision trees, or even predict future directions.

AI-augmented software development is rising in tandem with the rapidly growing low code / no code market. A low code software platform offers an easy-to-understand visual interface that enables non-techies to build or tweak applications.

Major low code platforms are beginning to incorporate AI, notably Googles AppSheet and Microsofts Power Platform. AppSheet uses natural language processing (NLP) to allow citizen developers to simply speak commands for the apps development. Although in its infancy, this use of NLP is a futurists dream creating software is as easy as talking to a computer.

AppSheet uses AI and ML to build predictive models into an application using the apps own store of data. Remarkably, Google claims that this ML-intensive task requires no prior ML experience from the developer.

Similarly, Microsofts Power Platform includes Power Automate and Power BI modules to allow a non-tech developer to design and automate analytics systems into the application with relative ease. AI really is opening doors to an entirely new group of citizen developers.

This larger group of developers is needed. Adopting AI-Augmented software development is a necessity for companies to remain competitive. Developers are expensive and in short supply: US labor statistics indicate that there were 1.4 million computing science jobs that were unfilled in 2020. Companies routinely face challenges in hiring software developers.

Clearly, AI-augmented software will dramatically shape the future: When writing software is as accessible as writing a detailed report, the pace of business will change in ways that arent fully predictable. Some reasonable assumptions:

Data explosion: Its likely that most of the apps created with AI-assisted tools will mine, manipulate, or present data. Any capable staffer will be able to find new ways to use data for competitive advantage; your average sale rep will be altering apps to learn more about prospects. The end result is that data mining will grow even more parabolically than it is today.

Security concerns: Its reasonable to assume that lower level staffers wont be able to code an application that will allow a major cyber attack; to prevent this, AI-augmented platforms will we hope have guardrails to block cybersecurity vulnerabilities by rookie devs. Yet with such vastly larger brigades of citizen developers, building so many intricate structures getting more advanced as AI advances its likely that well see security holes.

AI builds AI: In a boost to AI, AI-Augmented development platforms will be used to create more artificial intelligence capability. The process will fuel self-referential exponential growth: a tool that uses AI will create AI products, which in turn allows faster and more advanced building of AI-boosted applications. It is, perhaps, a dizzying prospect. Where the future takes us in this regard is hard to say. But when futurists talk about the singularity when machines gain true independence then this AI builds AI aspect clearly suggests it.

Democratization of Tech: Certainly, the greatest effect of AI-augmented software is the democratization of software development and technology overall. Cloud computing allowed small companies (even startups) to rent a data center and so compete with far larger outfits. Similarly, AI-augmented software platforms will allow smaller companies to build out big time competitive infrastructure.

Bottom line: we will soon look back at todays non-AI based software and wonder, how did we get anything done with these applications?

More here:

AI and Software Development: Let the Revolution Begin | eWEEK - eWeek

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You can listen to this interview on Spotify, Apple or your favorite podcast player.

***

The XPRIZE Foundation has a straightforward pitch: it organizes competitions in which the winning team gets a large cash prize for innovation breakthroughs.

Since launching its first competition in 1996, XPRIZE has awarded ~$300m including:

Who is the mind behind XPRIZE?

Peter Diamandis: a graduate of MIT and Harvard Medical School, the 60-year old has spent decades at the cutting edge of technology. His efforts have attracted the leading minds in innovation with James Cameron, Larry Page and Ray Kurzweil all on the XPRIZE board.

Earlier this year, Diamandis partnered with Elon Musk on a $100m XPRIZE for carbon removal technology.

In addition to founding the XPRIZE, Diamandis co-founded Singularity University, runs a $500m VC fund and has launched 20+ companies in the longevity, space, and education industries. He also writes extensively on innovation (check out his newsletter here).

An area that Diamandis is spending more time on is human longevity, which he believes is one of the worlds biggest business opportunities (if you want to make a billion dollars, help a billion people).

In a recent interview with The Hustle, Diamandis covers the longevity opportunity and discusses a number of interesting topics from Bitcoin to the space race to common traits of successful entrepreneurs:

(The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity)

***

Aging is a disease that can be slowed, stopped, and even reversed.

[Medical conditions] like cardiac, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. These are all correlated with aging. The more you age, the higher probability of these [conditions].

David Sinclair a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School deserves absolute credit [for bringing this concept to the public].

His book Lifespan is an amazing book which I promote more than I do my own books. If you havent read it, you should go out and get that book.

Theres a few things to point out.

First of all, look at 100,000 to 1,000,000 years ago when we were early hominids evolving on the savanna of Africa. You would go into puberty at age 13 because there was no birth control back then. So by the time you were 14, you were pregnant.

By the time you were 26, 27, 28, you were a grandparent. Your kids were having kids. Back then, food was scarce, right? There was no McDonalds. No Whole Foods.

The worst thing you could do for the perpetuation of the species was steal food from your grandchildrens mouths. The best thing you could do [for the survival of your progeny in a scarce world] was die.

So we didnt really live past age 30. If you had a disease that would kill you in your 40s, 50s, or 60s, it was never selected against. We didnt have evolutionary forces for a long-lived life.

The second thing [is genes]. Im 60 now and have the same genes as when I was 20. Why dont I look like I did at 20?

It turns out, its not your genome sequence. Rather, its which of your 30k genes is turned on and which has turned off. That is called the epigenome. Epi means above the genome. Its a control and your epigenome determines which genes should be on and which should be off.

The challenge is as you get older some of the wrong genes are on and some of the wrong genes are off and that is principally whats driving aging.

Theres a lot of different approaches to addressing [the root causes of why people age].

When I think about the biggest markets for entrepreneurs or investors on the planet, its AI and longevity (or biotech). There are no bigger markets.

Ive long said that the worlds biggest problems are the worlds biggest business opportunities and if you want to make a billion dollars, help a billion people.

Heres one of the problems. Up until now, everyone considered aging inevitable, and just part of life. But what if it isnt inevitable? What if aging is something that can be slowed, can be stopped. That would be extraordinary.

I spend a lot of time in [the longevity space]: 80% of my investments are in this space and I run a community called the Abundance 360 Summit, where I coach some 400 CEOs and leaders. The most popular topic is longevity every year.

Theres biotech, which is drugs, small molecules or cells being used to impact health.

Within biotech, there are 4 areas:

When we are born, our placenta is an organ that generates all these stem cells. I think of it as a 3D printer that manufactures the baby. After were born, we have a large supply of stem cells and those stem cells are there to repair damage (make new skin, nerves, muscles or whatever is required).

But as we grow older, our supply of stem cells diminishes radically. Like ten thousand fold or a hundred thousand fold. So you have less stem cells in your body to really solve any damage.

We use a vaccine that turns your immune system on to create antibodies that target a specific protein in your body. Its a way of treating chronic disease for pennies on the dollar (or a thousand times cheaper than other biologics).

Our DNA is a language of four nucleotides represented by ATCG. We have 3.2B from each of our parents. CRISPR allows us to go in there and edit and correct a single nucleotide, which a lot of times can be the cause of a genetic disease.

The gene could be an additional copy of whats there. It could be a copy thats a gene thats missing or an alternate version of a gene that you already have.This plus genome sequencing plus genome writing is really moving at exponential speeds.

Then there is medtech, which is AI, robotics, sensors, networks, and so forth.

[Im co-authoring] a book with Tony Robbins that comes out in February 2022 that looks at all of these things in very understandable language.

What Im focused on right now is how do I add at least a decade of healthy life this decade?

Along with AI, the technologies that I mentioned (stem cells, vaccines, gene therapy) are making a dent in the longevity universe.

David Sinclair and George Church [a Harvard PhD geneticist] believe that we can get to 120 years old. Maybe 150.

Now Im 60. If I make it to 120, Im intercepting 60 more years of advances, and I guarantee you that were going to slay aging probably in the next 20-30 years at the outmost.

A phrase that I use from [futurist and Singularity University co-founder] Ray Kurzweil is living long enough to live forever.

Your job isnt to make it all the way to 120. Its to live an extra 20 years for the purpose of getting to the impact of quantum computing and AI on these areas.

Theres a concept that Ray Kurzweil has popularized: longevity escape velocity.

Its the notion that today for every year that youre alive, science is extending your age by a 1/4 year.

Now, the question is when will we get to the point where for every year youre alive, science is extending your life for more than a year?.

Ray Kurzweil predicts that its within the next 12 years. And his predictions are pretty good. George Church has said he thinks its within the next 10 to 15 years. So its the same timeframe.

Ultimately, what wouldnt you pay for an extra 20-30 healthy years of life.

This is not slobbering in a wheelchair. This is where you have the aesthetics. You look great. The cognition. Youre thinking clearly with the mobility to move around and enjoy those extra years.

And what would you do with an extra 30 years of healthy life or more?

Lets dismiss the overpopulation myth.

When the book The Population Bomb was written [1968], things looked dire [on the overpopulation front]. This is like 50 years ago. Back then, the average was something like 5 children per family globally.

Today, weve dropped from ~5.5 children per family globally to a reproduction rate of ~2.4 children per family in the United States. Were below the replacement rate which is 2.1 children per family in Japan. And many parts of Europe are below the replacement rate. China, India and Africa have all come down.

I was interviewing Elon Musk in April. We were launching a $100m XPRIZE he funded.

He basically said the biggest problems hes concerned about is this notion of under population, with the human race going out with a whimper where we dont have the labor to support our ongoing capabilities.

So, it turns out longevity is critically important to continue to have the labor there as [the population] peaks in 20 years and then declines.

One last thing: there was a study done by Oxford and Harvard recently that said for every year of life we add on the average, the global economy increases by $38 trillion. Thats the impact of one extra year of healthy life for the world.

When youre at the top of your game and youre earning the most and youre able to make the best impacts and youve got the best relationships[you dont have to retire]. What happens if youve got the energy and vitality to not only go but accelerate.

Are these things going to be affordable for everybody? The kinds of treatments that were talking about dont cost a lot and definitely will not in the volume were speaking of.

Ray Kurzweil tells a great tale.

He says, you know, the cell phone came out in the 1980s and back then it was the size of a briefcase. It costs tens of thousands of dollars. And you drop a call every block in Manhattan. I mean, it really sucked. So, you know, back when it first came out, when it didnt work well, all the wealthy people paid for it. And today, there are more cell phones on the planet than there are humans and theyre cheap and they work extraordinarily well.

Its always been the case that, yes, the wealthy will be the first movers to some degree, but by the time the bugs are worked out, its cheap and available to everybody.

One of the biggest challenges with longevity is that people typically plan to live until 80 or 90. What happens if youre living for another 30 years [after you retire at 60]? What happens to Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security?

Well, I think were going to have to move the retirement age if people are healthier for longer. When Social Security was put in place, retirement age was set [based on the average age someone died, which is much less than it is now and in the future].

We need to realize we need to plan for a longer life. And thats part of this future were moving into.

[Since the start of COVID], everybody thinks theyre absolutely brilliant because their stocks, real estates and assets are all going up.

[These gains are the] result of pumping unlimited amounts of capital into the US and global economy to the point where its ridiculous and were devaluing dollars at a rate that people just dont understand.

[Also, were moving to a place where were] living longer and were digitizing the global economy. I think Bitcoin is a fundamental cornerstone of a long-lived and exponentially digitized world.

One of the big questions is how much should you invest?. This is my humble opinion and Im not an economist, but Im moving as much of my dollars into Bitcoin. Im probably 80% Bitcoin and 20% Ether.

When I can get 4%-8% interest rates on [crypto exchange] Abra for my crypto, rather than sticking it in the bank for 0% and deflationary pressuresthats insane.

When you digitize something in the early days of that digitization, the first step in the progress is slow. Its deceptively slow.

Take Kodak. The first digital camera was 0.01 megapixels. Next year, it was 0.02 megapixels. Then 0.04 and then 0.08. It all looked like zero to the executives at Kodak. And they ignored the digital camera. But 30 doublings later, it was a billion times better. Right? And you had 10 megabit cameras and film was dead.

When you digitize something, its slow and deceptive in the beginning, then its disruptive.

And then it demonetizes, dematerializes and democratizes access to products and services.

So thats exactly whats going on: Bitcoin digitized assets and capital. Its been slow and deceptive. Over the next 10 years, its going to enter the disruptive phase and its going to demonetize and democratize all these areas.

Our brains are local and linear and we think in a local and linear fashion. Ultimately, you have to realize that (and this is worth memorizing) if you:

So where are you in that process on that exponential road?

And theres so much social pressure for [Bitcoin]. So much human justice pressure and so much convenience pressure.

Bitcoin really got a lot of its initial launch out of the 2008 financial crisis and crisis tends to cause industries to shift.

2008 was a critical time. You saw Uber and Airbnb, and really the early days of cryptocurrency being born there.

[Now] the COVID crisis, which led to massive inflationary pressures as capital floats into the global economy and is accelerating [the adoption of Bitcoin]. So I think Bitcoin is more necessary than ever before.

Deceptive: Once something is digitized, its initial period of growth is deceptive because exponential trends dont seem to grow fast at first. Doubling .01 only gets you 0.2, then 0.4, and so on. At this phase, everything looks like zero. But exponential growth really takes off after it breaks the whole-number barrier. 2 quickly becomes 32, which then becomes32,000before you know it.

Disruptive: The existing market for a given product or service is disrupted by the new market that the exponential technology creates because digital technologies outperform in terms of cost and effectiveness. Once you can stream music on your phone, why buy CDs or records? If you can also snap, store, and share photographs, why buy a camera and film?

Demonetized: Money is increasingly removed from the equation as the technology becomes cheaperoften to the point of being free. Software is less expensive to produce than hardware and copies are virtually free. You can now download any number of apps on your phone to access terabytes of information and enjoy a multitude of services at costs approaching zero.

Dematerialized: Separate physical products are removed from the equation. Technologies that were once bulky or expensivecameras, GPS, phones, mapsare now all in a smartphone that fits in your pocket.

Democratized: Once something is digitized, more people have access to it. Powerful technologies are no longer only for governments, large organizations, or the wealthy.

Theres nothing else that I can think of [other than Bitcon]. I mean, maybe super high value real estate. But if you want something thats got liquidity and transferability, theres just one.

Its always on the menu and the answer is we will [have one]. Im just trying to figure out what would be the best there.

There is probably going to be prizes that were going to launch in which a token economy and cryptocurrencies are the solution that will win those prizes.

In 1994, I get a book from a friend of mine. Its called The Spirit of St. Louis and it was written by Charles Lindbergh. In this book, Lindbergh talks about the fact that in 1927, he flies from New York to Paris to win a $25k prize.

As I dug into this prize, I realized this guy, Raymond Ortega puts up $25k (which is today about $5-6m). He offers it to anyone who can fly between Paris and New York. And 9 different teams go after it.

They spend $400k trying to win the prize [which is] 16x the prize money.

I think, Oh my God, this is amazing, you only pay for success and theres no downside.

So I came up with the idea of the XPRIZE and X was going to stand for the name of the person, putting up the $10m.

I launch it in 1996, under the Arc of St. Louis without having the money and without having the teams. I rolled the dice. I met Anousheh Ansari, who had just sold her company for $1.3B and was a fellow space cadet.

She funded the $10m prize and we called it the Ansari XPRIZE in her honor.

[It was won by Burt Rutan, who was funded by Paul Allen] in 2004. Richard Branson came in and bought the rights to spaceship.

They have two independent visions that I both love.

Read more from the original source:

Peter Diamandis: The worlds biggest problems are the worlds biggest business opportunities - The Hustle

Time manipulation opens the door for countless ways to experience and progress through segments of games. In my opinion, not enough game developers take advantage of these rich concepts which have plenty of opportunity for greatness if done right. Harnessing abilities that can alter the fabric of time and exploit enemies is entertainment at its finest for me. Whether it be used for stealthily sneaking past or killing enemies, solving puzzles, or just going back and correcting a previous mistake, time manipulation in video games has near-unlimited opportunities for spectacular enjoyment and creativity.

Previous games over the years are evidence that this can be done to good success, so here are 5 great games that showcase this perfectly.

Arkane Studios stealth masterpiece, Dishonoured, has you go out on an adventure to rescue your in-game daughter whilst assassinating a line of baddies along the way. However, what separated this game from the rest is that you possessed various unique powers and gadgets to use at your disposal, one of which is Bend Time.

At its base level, Bend Time allows ex-royal bodyguard turned assassin Corvo Attano to slow down time so that enemies and objects react and move at a slower pace, giving the player more time to analyse situations and adapt their approach. Although, the ability really comes into interesting territory when it is fully upgraded, allowing the player to fully stop time completely for a short amount of time. The power duration isnt extremely long, but even so, there is surprisingly a lot you can do with the ability to halt time completely.

Combining the Bend Time power with other powers and gadgets is art on another level. If you look in the right places, there are various impressive videos of players using this power to kill or subdue enemies in unique ways. The opportunity for creativity with this ability only became even more prominent in the sequel, Dishonoured 2, which includes a new array of powers from Emily Kaldwin that can be combined with Corvos on New Game+.

This indie game had me die several times in a row without making me feel frustrated thanks to its time manipulation powers. Now THAT is an accomplishment.

Braid is a 2D puzzle platformer that released in 2008 and was mainly thought of as an innovative enjoyable game thanks to its creative use of time manipulation powers that are used to solve puzzles and progress through levels.

The game follows Tim who is on his way to find a princess and along the way must conquer enemies and obstacles using his time manipulation abilities, including the ability to reverse time, the ability to pass objects along different timestreams (for select puzzles), and the ability to place a ring that slows down time within that specific radius. Like games such as Portal, every time that I would struggle to solve a puzzle, I could do nothing but blame myself as I knew that each one was carefully thought out and could be completed without seeming unfair. I would feel immensely satisfied upon solving a puzzle that made me scratch my head for a long time.

In terms of puzzle platformers, this is probably one of my favourites just for its innovative ideas and excellent delivery.

Makes dying a little less frustrating.

Singularity felt a lot like Bioshock mixed with time powers, and Im not complaining.

Developed by Raven Softwarein 2010, Singularity is a first-person shooter with horror elements that follows Nathaniel Renko as he leaps back and forth between two decades to right a wrong he committed during the games prologue. The story itself (which I wont spoil here) is interesting and has a lot of twists and turns that caught me off guard and left me in suspense.

Other than the story and setting itself, the gameplay elements are also time-related. Players are given the Time Manipulation Device (TMD) and therefore have several abilities to use, such as the ability to travel backward and forwards through time, move an object backward or forwards through time or age an enemy into ash, create a time bubble which slows down everything within its proximity, and also other generic abilities such as being able to levitate an object in the air or blast enemies with a shockwave. These abilities really shake up gameplay and prevent it from being just another generic shooter.

Really hope this doesnt malfunction.

Having similar gameplay to the previously mentioned Singularity, TimeShift is set in a world in which an unknown protagonist goes back in time to the year 1939 to rebel against the dystopian world dictator, Dr. Aiden Krone. This is achieved via the Beta Suit which is also the source of the games time manipulation powers that the player can harness and use at their own will. These powers include the ability to slow, stop, or even rewind time to benefit the player in combat and also can be used for specific puzzles.

The ability to slow time is useful, as like Dishonoured it allows the player to avoid incoming projectiles and tactically analyse and adapt to the surroundings. When stopping time, players can also steal an enemys gun much to the enemys surprise when time unfreezes and they realise that they are utterly screwed. The ability to rewind time can be extremely tactical, as it allows the player to undo any mistakes made like being detected by an enemy. In addition to this, these powers have uses outside of just combat.

Like most other entries on this list, there are various time-related puzzles involved. Time Stop might be used for passing through a pipe with fire bursting across your path, whereas Time Reverse can be used for temporarily removing rubble from your path in order to progress. They are quite simplistic, but it is still appreciated nonetheless.

Try shoot me now, snipers!

This linear story-driven gamehas quite a lot going for it within its roughly 10-hour length. Right off the bat, youll probably recognise quite a fair few faces, with the game being host to some great A-list celebrities such as Shawn Ashmore, Lance Reddick, Dominic Monaghan, and Aiden Gillen. These actors work to create a compelling time-related story which piqued my interest every time they were on screen.

In terms of gameplay, the combat is pretty solid and there are loads of cool time powers which help against the often (In my experience) challenging enemies. These powers include the ability to create a time shield which you stand in and allows you to heal whilst inside, the ability to create a freeze zone around an enemy and then rapidly fire bullets which go off all at once when the zone goes away, the ability to sprint faster than time, a time dash ability, time vision which can locate enemies and objects, and a time blast attack which sends enemies into the air.

There are also specific enemies in the game which have their own time-related abilities such as moving faster than time, and they are also immune to environmental freezes/pauses.

My only issues with the game are the clunky platforming segments and the short game length, as it felt like by the time I reached the peak of my powers capabilities, the game was almost over.

Really adds to some amazing storytelling.

Those were some of the many great games with time-related mechanics. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

(Video by GERRiE.)

More:

5 Great Games With Time Manipulation - KeenGamer News