Despite a rocky launch, Jedi: Survivor could be the best Star Wars adaptation to date
|Published
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor delivers an exhilarating sequel that surpasses its predecessor in every way.
Building upon the solid foundations of Jedi: Fallen Order, this game takes players on an epic journey through new planets, offering a vast and immersive experience.
With an improved performance after the Day 0 patch, the game now boasts a smooth 60 frames-per-second gameplay, eliminating the frustrating frame rate drops and screen tearing issues that plagued the game at its launch in April.
The heart of Survivor lies in its captivating narrative and well-developed characters. The crew aboard the Mantis and the individuals at Pyloon's Saloon are charming, charismatic, and bring the story to life, making players genuinely care about their plight. The addictive exploration, complete with a Metroidvania structure, rewards players with satisfying puzzles and the promise of new abilities and powers.
The combat system receives a subtle evolution, allowing players to choose different lightsaber stances and tactics, adding depth and versatility to engagements. From dual wielding to using a blaster, the combat options are varied and strategic. The attention to detail in the Star Wars universe shines through, with breathtaking music that feels straight out of the films and hilarious dialogue that adds a touch of levity to intense moments.
While the visuals may be inconsistent during gameplay, the outstanding cutscenes make up for it, showcasing the game's cinematic quality. Although the DualSense controller features are underutilised, the overall gameplay experience remains exceptional.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a shining example of a successful sequel, expanding on its predecessor and delivering a truly remarkable Star Wars adventure. With its engaging story, addictive exploration, and improved performance, it stands among the best Star Wars games ever created, and cements Respawn Entertainment as one of the best developers in the business.
DreamStudio brings a polished final product to the growing AI image space
DreamStudio is the web-based AI image generator app from Stability AI. Stability is responsible for releasing the most advanced open source AI image model so far. Open source means that the model itself is available to anyone, but as with all modern AI systems, you will still need a powerful GPU (Graphics processing unit) to actually run it. That’s where DreamStudio comes in – giving you an easy-to-use interface and access to Stability AI’s state of the art GPUs.
Like with other top-end image generators out currently, DreamStudio does a great job at creating a wide variety of images – from more realistic photos, to graphic design, and all kinds of art. That said, DreamStudio falls behind its major competitor MidJourney when it comes to ease of use. If you’re looking to create pretty, artistic images, MidJourney will get you there with little effort. However, DreamStudio’s model will give you much greater control over the final result, but requires you to put more time into creating the right text prompt.
Notably, DreamStudio also comes with a small suite of tools for AI image editing, which many of its competitors do not. Aside from the standard text-to-image workflow, DreamStudio also lets you give it an example image to start from, or to edit existing photos. In the first case, this means you can draw a rough outline of the final image, even just some stick figures, and turn it into a fleshed out picture. In the second case, you can select a part of the image to replace, describe what you want instead, and let the AI do the editing for you. Both of these features give you far more control over the final product, and make DreamStudio quite a robust image creation tool.
The first few images you create with DreamStudio are free, so don’t hesitate to try it out if you want to get a glimpse at the future of generative design and editing.
James Browning is a freelance tech writer and local music journalist
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