Rock News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

As we first mentioned back in October, Microsoft has been busy leveraging machine learning into all of its software products and now Paint will let you go all Picasso with its generative AI system, Cocreator. Just a handful of clicks and you'll be gazing at some spectacular landscapes, glorious starfields, and anatomically-inaccurate hands and feet.

GranBlue Fantasy is one of the biggest anime franchises in the world, and yet its rise to stardom was the reverse of many of its peers, beginning life as a hit mobile game before extending into animation and manga. Whatever its roots, the tale, set within the multiple kingdoms of the Zegagranda Skydom, follows Gran and his companions across the skies, and now Cygames are set to bring the GranBlue Fantasy world to a wider audience with GranBlue Fantasy: Relink, a third-person action RPG with visuals lifted straight out of the anime.

Rock on! This is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner has confirmed a sequel is on the way – and it's set to start filming in early 2024.

Should you be in need of a gaming laptop this year, but somehow remain empty-lapped after the Black Friday bonanza, don't fret. There are still plenty of gaming laptop deals to be had over Cyber Monday. That even includes gaming laptops with current-gen CPUs and GPUs. Sometimes both, if you're lucky.

The end of the world is coming and there is only one hope of survival: getting off of it. That’s the premise of the city building and dungeon crawler hybrid SteamWorld Build. It is the latest entry to SteamWorld series, picking yet another new genre compared to previous entries, and challenging you to build a town that satisfies everyone’s needs while mining for resources and rocket parts to get off the planet.

Mercury may not be stealing the spotlight like Mars so often does, but the planet is as intriguing as the Red Planet. The surface of Mercury is marked by mysterious hollows, which have puzzled scientists for decades. These depressions vary in size from 60 feet to over a mile across and can be up to 120 feet deep, with no known origin. The planet's lack of atmosphere means that wind and water couldn't have created these hollows, leaving scientists searching for alternative explanations. And this is despite the fact that NASA had sent its Mercury Messenger spacecraft to study the planet thoroughly.

Hey everyone, I wanted to share a quick update about Eurogamer, and its future which now looks to lie outside the Reedpop business.

ReedPop is 'investigating the potential sale' of its Gamer Network business.

 Battery giants are starting to put their money on new sodium-based technology, a sign that there could be yet another shakeup in the industry that's crucial for the energy transition.

First reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, console players of older Assassin's Creed games like Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla encountered Black Friday ad pop-ups for the latest entry, Assassin's Creed Mirage, while trying to access in-game menus. Ubisoft has since stated that the ads appeared due to a «technical error» and removed them.

A Baldur's Gate 3 fan has discovered a book that can be found in the Wyrm’s Rock barracks that gives a surprising amount of detail about Dragonborn anatomy, revealing how their private parts work.

Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 | 12GB GDDR6X | 5,888 shaders | 2,475MHz boost | $549.99$514.99 at Newegg (save $30)Ignore the inflated pre-discount selling price, the fact that this is an RTX 4070 retailing for below the standard Nvidia MSRP is the thing to really pay attention to. This is nearly RTX 3080 performance but with all those nice RTX 40 features. Also, it's covered in lots of shiny RGB, which will be a plus for some of you and not for others, we're sure.

The main boss of the Fire Temple in is The Marbled Gohma, a huge cyclops made of fire and lava that can be a challenge to beat. Link has a friend they can call upon for this battle that could be the key to your success. With the boss having a single weakness you can exploit, there are plenty of ways to overcome this literal trial by fire.

Developer Don’t Nod’s supernaturally-infused episodic adventure title Life is Strange has surpassed 20 million lifetime players since its launch in January 2015.

Left 4 Dead has stood the test of time, more or less—and while there hasn't been a peep from the series in years, that's more down to Valve weirdness rather than a sign of a lack of interest from players. Half-Life was galactically successful, and we're all still waiting on a third game. Someday, Gabe, someday.

One hilarious Starfield bug has made the entire city of New Atlantis orbit a player’s ship.

Studying asteroids can help scientists unlock the secrets of the Earth and how they formed. However, asteroids also pose a threat to the planet on occasion. These ancient space rocks have impacted Earth in the past and changed the course of history. More often than not, asteroids pass Earth at close but safe distances without ever touching the atmosphere even. However, it is still important to track them to minimize the uncertainties around their close approaches. NASA, the US space agency, has revealed that a building-sized asteroid is expected to pass Earth by a close margin today, November 24. Know all about the close encounter of Earth with this asteroid today.

If you're a big fan of Valve's work, chances are you'll know that one of its most popular and beloved titles, Left 4 Dead, started out as nothing but a mod for Counter-Strike. Original developers Turtle Rock created a mod called 'Zombie City' for the shooter, which is possibly the earliest prototype of Left 4 Dead that we currently know of. Earlier today, Valve seems to have accidentally left it in a recent update for Counter-Strike 1.6.

Black Friday is almost upon us, which means the big 2023 Steam Autumn Sale is also here. You can grab deals on thousands of games, including big multiplatform titles like Diablo IV, Resident Evil 4, Hogwarts Legacy, and Cyberpunk 2077, indie hits like Dredge, Dave the Diver, and Wizard with a Gun, and Steam standbys like Arma III, Rust, and Deep Rock Galactic. Here’s a quick selection of some of the best deals (there are no flash deals, so browse at your leisure):

Mortal Kombat 1 Kameo character Tremor launched this week, and players have already discovered his secret Brutality.

Last week, Mortal Kombat 1 fans discovered a hidden Omni-Man Brutality. Getting it was simple - you just had to hold R2 and L2 while pulling off his Get Boned! move. It's no surprise then that Tremor has his own hidden variation, which fans have uncovered just as fast. It's a little cheerier than Omni-Man ripping out your skeleton, mind.

Left 4 Dead's co-lead, Chet Faliszek, reminisces about the early days of the co-op PvE (player vs. environment) zombie shooter and what it took to finally get it off the ground. 

Pearl Abyss shared several Black Desert news this week. First of all, the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game can be purchased at a 90% discount until November 28 via Steam or until November 29 via the official website. This means you could get Black Desert for just a dollar (or euro).

A former Rockstar developer has shared new details about the fate of the studio’s cancelled spy game Agent.

To track and study asteroids which are mainly present in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, NASA has several advanced ground and space-based telescopes in place. NEOWISE telescope, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), Pans-STARRS1, and Catalina Sky Survey are just some of the telescopes and observatories that help study asteroids and remove any uncertainties around their potentially close approaches to Earth. With the help of these, the space agency has shed light on an asteroid that is expected to pass Earth today, November 23.

There's a hint for today's Wordle waiting below, nestled snugly between a range of general tips designed to give you the best chance of winning every day. Of course, there's also the answer to the November 23 (887) Wordle if your game's in danger of going off the rails. Whatever you need to win, you'll find it here.

As he recounts his work producing and managing the original Left 4 Dead game launch, released 15 years ago this week, Chet Faliszek pauses our conversation at his Seattle home office to double-check an exact date. "September 7, 2005, at 1:10 p.m." This was the exact moment he was formally introduced (via e-mail) by his boss, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, to Turtle Rock Studios founder Mike Booth, to “consult” on a new, Valve-funded video game project. Its codename at the time was “Terror.”

Last week, the top end Asus ROG Ally received a hearty Black Friday discount, but some of you might not have spotted that the cheaper version has also dropped in price. For under $450, you can bag the AMD Ryzen Z1 version of the handheld PC, meaning it’s both less than most gaming laptops out there and the same price as the older reduced 512GB Steam Deck. Simply put, if you’re looking to play a chunk of your library on the go at 1080p, this deal is for you.

I don't know about you, but my favorite way to see new games announced is in PowerPoint documents with titles like «3Q 2023 Earnings Results — Investor Relations.» It's just so magical. I get little tingles all over.

Colleen Ballinger, the controversial content creator known for her Miranda Sings persona, has returned to YouTube five months after her infamous ukulele ‘apology’. Ballinger’s new blog content, simply titled “fall vlog,” starts with another apology and an acknowledgment of the “really embarrassing” ukulele video, before launching into sedate content about sea shells, rocks on the shore, and the creator’s domestic life. She posted the 13-minute video on Saturday.

Fortnite is set to unveil a «Rock Band» mode in its upcoming December season, revealed by insider HYPEX.

The region of Ulukita is expanding in Black Desert Online. Pearl Abyss has announced a new zone, Darkseeker’s Retreat, expanded Arena of Solare, holiday events, and more.

When Pokemon Scarlet and Violet came out last year, it promised many things and delivered on pretty much all of them. One of the key things that the game delivered on was the open world you could enjoy and roam through however and whenever you wanted. There was also a three-pronged storyline that you could do in any way, depending on where your mood swung. When it was announced that Gen 9 would get a two-part DLC like Gen 8 did before, fans were interested and curious to see where things would go. But while there was a certain “style” and “quality” to the game, it did have a key flaw that many have noted.

Acer Predator Helios 16 | GeForce RTX 4070 | Core i7 13700HX | 16-inch | 1600p | 240Hz IPS | 16GB DDR5-5600 | 1TB SSD | $1,899.99$1,399.99 at B&H Photo (save $500)We're big fans of the latest Acer Predator laptop (read our review of the RTX 4080 version) and this RTX 4070 machine has got a lot about it, too. The Core i7 13700HX CPU is ostensibly an eight-core chip with E-core benefits. That means you get 16 full power processing threads, and a further eight cores to take it up to a total of 24 threads. For a $1,400 laptop that's pretty tasty. It's also sporting some speedy DDR5 memory, a full 1TB SSD and a 500nit IPS display with a 2560 x 1600 native resolution. Sadly, it's not the Mini-LED version in the top Helios 16 models, but it's still a bright, colorful screen. 

Finding and collecting all the Energy Concentrating Components in can be quite a task, especially if you do not know where to start looking for them. These are quest items related to the World Quest “Road to the Singularity” and gathering all of them will allow you to unlock a special Luxurious Chest. This quest, on the other hand, was added with Version 4.1, and is part of the Nation of Hydro, also known as Fontaine in . To be more specific, the quest is located in the Fontaine Research Institute of Kinetic Energy Engineering Region and is connected to solving the issues that take place there.

Brace yourself for another terrifying deep sea survival adventure as the next Subnautica is launching in early 2025.

MSI Vector | RTX 4080 | Intel Core i9 12900HX | 16GB DDR5-4800 | 1TB SSD | 1200p | 144Hz | $2,099$1,599 at Newegg (save $500)This is the most affordable RTX 4080-based gaming laptop I've found, possibly at any time this year. It's not some hobbled GPU implementation either, using a 175W design of the graphics card to give you the full gaming performance. It's certainly not the most beautiful laptop you will see, nor the slimmest (though that helps keep it cool), and I'd rather a higher refresh rate panel and a bit more RAM, but it's a great price for an otherwise high-spec gaming machine.

Fantasy shooter Immortals of Aveum failed to hit sales expectations due to the sheer number of games coming out at the same time.

The next Subnautica game is launching in the first half of 2025. Like the first two games, it will be developed by Unknown Worlds and is coming to both PC and console.

One of my favourite things about modern PC gaming is when the bubbling microbial soup of Steam unexpectedly spits out a preposterously successful game. It happened this summer with BattleBit Remastered. It happened with Phasmophobia a couple of years back. It arguably happened with Baldur's Gate 3, although that one has a fair amount more pedigree behind it.

NASA, with the help of its advanced ground and space-based telescopes, has tracked a mammoth asteroid whose orbit will bring it very close to Earth today. As per the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), an asteroid, given the designation of Asteroid 2023 VE7, is on its way toward Earth and could make its closest approach to the planet today, November 20.

is a phenomenal game, with a plethora of features that in any other game would be undeniable highlights — such as the buildable vehicles and other contraptions from Zonai Devices. While these devices are plentiful and varied in, there is still plenty of room for improvement, and a number of excellent additions could be made to maximize the efficiency of, and entertainment that can be experienced with Zonai Devices.

In a groundbreaking venture, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for its inaugural attempt to collect soil or rock samples from the Moon and transport them to Earth. Termed the Lunar Sample Return Mission (LSRM), this ambitious project signals a significant leap for India's space exploration endeavours.

Finally, we have arrived: There is now an arcade-style combat racing game about combine harvesters mowing down waves of golden grain. This vital work is called Furious Farm: Total Reap-Out, and it's an absolute grainbath, a vegetal slaughter, wherein eight farmers go to town upon not just a field of crops, but each other, to win the Grain Prix grand title.

Sam Altman, the just ousted CEO of OpenAI, is discussing a possible return to the company behind the ChatGPT bot even as he considers launching a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture, a person briefed on the matter said on Saturday.

Prepare yourself, your wallet, and your loved ones, because we're just a few days away from the Steam Autumn Sale for 2023.

Most life has evolved to live on the surface of the Earth, with even the aerial creatures needing to land sometime while the marine life swims in the water covering the sand below.  There’s enough space for everyone but that’s also a bit of a problem, in that all there is is space.  Under the surface, though, is buried wealth beyond all imagining, from minerals and ores to rare gems, enough to make a stoic dwarf’s eyes glow with excitement.  With pickaxe in hand and a good-natured greed in their hearts, the dwarves will face any lurking danger or hostile creature in their vast underground kingdom because there’s gold down there they haven’t mined yet.

Music has always been an integral part of Scott Pilgrim. There are the in-universe bands – Sex Bob-omb, The Clash at Demonhead, The Katayanagi Twins – and the (often banger) songs they play, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the Worldadded a lot of moody and groovy music to the mix to help complement the hyper-stylized approach Edgar Wright took to the adaptation.

After nearly three decades, the classic Super Mario RPG is back and as quirky as ever. This one-of-a-kind take on both the Super Mario universe and RPG genre is packed with unique mechanics, secrets, and puzzles that may be a bit perplexing for new players at first, but we’re here to help you.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder sends Mario and pals to the Flower Kingdom, where a whole batch of threatening lifeforms are just begging to be stomped on by our heroes. While many invasive species from the Mushroom Kingdom also exist in the Flower Kingdom — like the Goomba, Koopa, Spiny, and Piranha Plant — this game is full of brand-new strange little creatures.

As initially reported by IGN, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors commented during a financial presentation that he has no comment on the state of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake. He also states, “Anything I say to this becomes a headline.” Yes, sir. Yes, sir, it will.

I was seven or eight years old when I first booted up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on my dad’s Xbox 360. This was before I knew the term “RPG” or even understood the scope of its sprawling open worlds. Countless playthroughs began and died as I fumbled through Cyrodiil, only to start over again.

Entering the world of darkness, escaping from reality into a fairy tale book, Kingdom Shell brings its players something magical that’s beyond one’s imagination.  Inspired by games such as Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight and Rygar on the Nes, this 2D pixelated fantasy Metroidvania brings us to the beginning chapters of once upon a time and shows us that originality can be put into a video game. You shouldn’t miss out on this game developed and published by Cup of Pixels.

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the PS4. A console packed full of incredible games such as God of War, Bloodborne, and The Last of Us Part 2, it can prove very hard to pick a single favourite from the library. Well, we decided to try anyway. Below, we asked several IGN members of staff to choose just one game that jumps out at them when they hear the words “PlayStation 4”. Don’t see your favourite mentioned anywhere? Let us know what you’d pick and why in the comments.

Massively multiplayer sci-fi sandbox game EVE Online has just witnessed one of the biggest heists in its two-decade history. 

Embracer Group has said it has laid off 904 staff, or 5% of its workforce, since its financial struggles began following the collapse of a $2 billion deal, reportedly with Saudi government funded company Savvy Games Group.

With its vast number of ground and space-based telescopes and observatories, NASA has discovered as many as 1298148 to date, and one of them is predicted to pass Earth by a close margin today, November 16. NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has designated this space rock as Asteroid 2023 VL5. During its flyby, it will come as close as 3.2 million kilometers from the planet's surface. Know all about this close encounter with Asteroid 2023 VL5.

Lenovo Legion Pro 7i | Nvidia RTX 4080 | Intel Core i9 13900HX | 16-inch | 1600p | 240Hz | 32GB DDR5-5600 | 1TB NVMe SSD | $2,749$1,999 at B&H Photo (save $750)This is a great discount on the best RTX 4080 laptop I've tested and is even lower than it was on Prime Day. It's a fantastic notebook, offering performance that can often match and sometimes beat an RTX 4090-based system (see our review). There's a high-performance CPU to back it up, a decent, bright 1600p screen, and a fair amount of storage. All with a discount.

The for are now out. It will be an interesting chapter since the fight between Kenjaku and Takaba is so unserious. Here is a guide on the .

We review Senjutsu: Battle for Japan, a dueling/skirmish game published by Lucky Duck Games. Senjutsu: Battle for Japan has players facing off an an ancient samurai duel.

Spider-Man arguably has one of the best supporting casts in comic books, a collection of friends and enemies nearly as iconic as he is. It’s one of the reasons he’s so popular, and why Sony is content to make movies like Venom, Morbius, and Kraven the Hunter based on his rogues’ gallery, with no connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and nary a hint of Spidey himself.

Whether it’s the surprisingly frequent Evanescence covers on TikTok, the return of ’90s staple JNCO jeans, or the fact that Netflix’s hit show Beeffeatured Limp Bizkit music, the cultural signs are all pointing toward a shocking truth: Nu metal is back, baby.

You would think that the upcoming GTA 6 reveal trailer would be enough to assuage the rumour mill for even a moment, but no – even the soundtrack of said trailer is subject to analysis.

In a new development, NASA has revealed that an asteroid is set to pass Earth by a close margin today, November 15. NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has designated this space rock as Asteroid 2023 UO. The asteroid was discovered and tracked using various ground and space-based telescopes. It will pass Earth at a distance of approximately 2.4 million kilometers. Check out all the details of Asteroid 2023 UO's close approach.

Pi - the number, shown by the symbol π - has often been said to contain the complete works of Shakespeare within its infinitely flowing digits. Mathematicians still don't know if that's actually true, but after 759 days, one streamer has proven that Pi contains a 16,000 hour Pokemon Sapphire player that keeps getting stuck in the starting town.

Now that Starfield is out, we realize with sinking hearts that it'll be years before we get another new Bethesda RPG. Not to worry: there are some highly ambitious mod projects for Bethesda games on the horizon, like Skyblivion, which is recreating Oblivion in Skyrim's engine, and Skywind, which is doing something similar with Morrowind.

Coral Island includes every feature you’d expect from a farming sim game while remembering its Indonesian roots with its novel diving mechanic. We know the basics of fishing, farming, and mining all too well, but what is this new activity all about?

Given the hype surrounding it prior to release, pretty much everyone expected Starfield to be a rousing success. However, most probably expected (hoped, even) it would have a healthy amount of staying power. But as recent stats show, Bethesda’s newest IP is experiencing a drop in popularity.

Persona 5 Royal is the kind of complete experience that left me wanting for nothing, and so I have some mixed feelings about its spinoff games. And Persona 5 Tactica, which moves the groovy action to a satisfying grid-based combat system, doesn't fully succeed in making me feel the way the original, epic JRPG did. But still, it's nice to get to see some of my favorite characters again. And Atlus' combat designers have shown that their skill at making fast-paced, punchy battles that reward clever planning translates nicely to the turn-based tactics genre.

Had you been at Slaughterhouse Studios when Brian May arrived one summer day in 1990, you may have thought you’d stumbled into an alternate timeline of British rock music. The Queen maestro had traveled to the outskirts of Hull in the U.K. to lay down some riffs on a couple of new tracks. Yet rather than shredding to Freddie Mercury’s wails demanding that Scaramouche do the fandango, May was putting the final fuzzy touches on grimdark tales of stranded Space Marines and gigantic robotic Titans, conjured straight from the sci-fi world of Warhammer 40,000.

Persona 5 Tactica has somehow found its way into the wild ahead of launch for the second time.

I'm an old man. I've created many an autoexec.bat and config.sys file in my life, vividly remember plugging in my first 3D accelerator card with pass-through cables through a Matrox Mystique GPU, and have benchmarked practically every graphics card released since 2006. And the appearance of this gorgeous new Galax graphics card (via Videocardz) this morning was like snorting a hit of pure nostalgia, bringing all those memories flooding back.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has seemingly confirmed in a recent interview that characters will have customisation options, something that was specific to story scenes in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

World of Warcraft fans are worried that one simple frame from the wonderfully somber The War Within trailer foreshadows a grim turn for the High King of the Alliance, Anduin Wrynn. 

Lokesh Kanagaraj's action-packed hit, "Leo," featuring Thalapathy Vijay, has been a sensation since its grand debut on October 19, 2023. Currently rocking theaters and about to surpass the impressive ₹600 crore mark worldwide, the film is now getting ready for its big online release. Amidst global excitement and soaring expectations, "Leo" made a splash by premiering in Tamil and also hitting screens in Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Hindi.

Playing Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) can be a real thrill with intense battles one after the other. But to come out on top, you need some clever tricks up your sleeve. Let's explore some easy tips to help you outplay your opponents and breeze through those victories.

Sam 'Samwise' Didier, the longtime Blizzard art director who defined the iconic look of the studio's games, has announced that he's retiring after 32 years with the company.

Summon Dragons 2, because you didn’t summon enough in the original Summon Dragons… This game is your typical dragon RPG where you tame and collect scaly, and sometimes furry beasts. You can interact with your dragons and raise them for genetics to spawn new monstrosities to explore and take into epic combat.

Slay the Spire is, without a doubt, one of the best roguelike deck builders that money can buy. It sees you attempt to ascend through a series of procedurally generated floors, developing effective strategies to overcome increasingly dangerous opponents. It's the perfect blend of strategic card-based battles and choice-based dungeon crawling, and naturally, many other developers have attempted to use its winning formula in their own games.

With the help of its advanced ground and space-based telescopes, NASA has tracked an asteroid whose orbit will bring it very close to Earth today. The orbits of these asteroids, which are also known as ancient space rocks, often bring them very close to Earth, and this is known as a ‘close approach'. As per the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), an asteroid, given the designation of Asteroid 2023 VT3, is on its way and could make its closest approach to Earth today, November 10.