Shock News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

A number of panelists who took part in a community manager talk during EGX 2023 have been calling on event organizers to increase security at future panels after sexist and derogatory comments were allegedly shouted out while they were speaking. 

Seamus Blackley, who spearheaded the development of the original Xbox and co-designed legendary PC games including System Shock, Flight Unlimited, and Jurassic Park Trespasser, says that the sale of Activision Blizzard to Microsoft will “torment” outgoing CEO Bobby Kotick. Explaining how he initially helped pitch Guitar Hero to Kotick, Blackley also describes how the Activision boss reportedly turned the idea down before purchasing the series years later, adding it to Activision’s substantial gaming catalog, which also includes Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and Diablo 4.

As my colleague, PCG senior editor Robin Valentine, pointed out in his seminal treatise against horniness in Baldur's Gate 3, «An adventuring party is basically like the Olympic Village, and we all know what goes on there.» Your BG3 crew has this youthful vitality to it, but «youth» can mean very different things for Faerûn's fantasy races. Some spoilers for Shadowheart's Act 3 story ahead.

It’s happening. After four years, Intel Extreme Masters is finally headed back to Sydney, Australia, as part of SXSW Sydney. The tournament will host some of the world's best esports teams from October 20-22 as they compete in Counter-Strike 2.

New York City is home to both Spider-Man and one of the more significant comic book events in the world, New York Comic-Con, which is on right now in the Big Apple. With the eagerly anticipated Marvel's Spider-Man 2 out this time next week (on 20th October), it was practically inevitable we'd see something from Insomniac at the show.

It’s a sad time for the world. Just when there was a chance of a thawing in the Middle East, the awful attacks in Israel and retaliation in Gaza have frozen hopes of peace and progress. It has set us all back 50 years. I look at the news and want to cry. I want to look away, but I also want to look so I can fully understand the scope of the heartbreak that is happening.

I have a confession to make: Before this week I, Toussaint Egan, avowed lover of animation and all things dark and spooky, had never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas. I know, this is a shock; I’ll give you a moment to process and collect your jaws from the floor.

One of the biggest twists of Baldur's Gate 3was foreshadowed in the lyrics of a certain catchy song. Major spoilers ahead for Baldur's Gate 3.

Before I dive into this little Baldur's Gate 3 revelation—this article contains big, stonking spoilers for the game's third act. I'm talking about twists that are of major importance to a key figure in the game's plot—you have been warned, adventurer. The third act of Baldur's Gate 3 sees a handful of shocking reveals concerning the Guardian, that helpfully dreamy visitor you create at the start of the game.

If you want something done right, do it yourself. This probably isn’t the mantra that Intel was following when it unintentionally revealed its 14th gen CPU lineup, but if you make a mistake like this, sometimes, you just have to own it.

After the WGA writers' strike finally came to an end after over 100 days, you might have been anticipating the SAG-AFTRA actors' strike following suit as the union and studios headed back to the negotiating table. 

EA Sports has released the first big post-launch patch for FC 24 and it makes some significant changes to gameplay.

PlatinumGames’ former vice president, Hideki Kamiya, has launched a YouTube channel and said he feels “very refreshed” after quitting the company he co-founded.

There is currently a Punishing Gray Raven advertisement in Times Square. No, it’s not a simple billboard or poster – it’s on the big screen! In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the same screen that recently featured a commercial for Nikke.

You’d think that after 35 years of kidnapping Peach, Bowser might take a hint. She isn’t into you, bro! Unfortunately for the Mushroom Kingdom princess, Bowser’s crush seems like it will only intensify with the release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder later this month — a game in which Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, and Toad can all turn into elephants.

The Sega Saturn’s second controller design has become the stuff of legend over the course of the last 25 years. The original Saturn pad was a bit clunky, but wide, while the second offering was more streamlined – a bit like how the Sega Genesis had a chunkier pad to start, but later got a thinner design for the six-button pad. Each felt a bit different due to the shape of the pads and while the second Saturn pad was better-looking and in some ways more responsive, I always preferred the larger form factor of the first controller.

I’m into how weird Super Mario Wonder is. Look, all the obvious jokes about shrooms have already been made, but this game looks strange on the whole. That’s a great thing, as 2D Mario has been formulaic throughout its history, so we could use a change-up. I’m just glad we’re presumably done with the “New” series: I mean, it’s not new anymore!

Nintendo has shared a new promo for upcoming release Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it is really quite charming.

Over the past few months, rumors had been gathering regarding a potential PS5 Slim announcement at some point this year, with many expecting PlayStation to unveil the console at some kind of big event. That's why it came as quite a shock to many that PlayStation casually confirmed its existence with a series of tweets, and that the PS5 Slim will eventually replace the standard PS5 model once stock has dried up.

Here's a first look at the reworked Throne of the Tides Mythic+ which includes new abilities on trash and boss encounters!

Jason Momoa is leaving Aquaman behind and entering James Gunn's DC Universe as Lobo.

I have patience for most things to arrive on PC in due time, but Sky: Children of the Light, the online flying and platform puzzling game from Journey studio Thatgamecompany was not one of them. I've been playing the tiny MMO-alike game for two years on my Nintendo Switch because the online goblin in me just couldn't wait. Sky: CotL still doesn't have an official release date on PC, but it is participating in the Steam Next Fest so you can try it out, or migrate your existing account, right now.

Just when you thought that Fortnite couldn’t get any more crossover characters or make a “big splash” with fans by adding new skins for them to be, they come out and pull a trio that people will be excited about. We’re currently a third of the way into October, somehow, and that means we’re getting ever closer to Halloween, so it’s only appropriate that the game brings in some classic Halloween characters to help scare up some attention and make fans of all types happy. The three characters in question are Alan Wake, Michael Myers, and Jack Skellington. We’ll happily break down why these three are relevant.

Spooky season is fast approaching, so naturally all the horror games are coming out to play. One of these is Amnesia: The Bunker – the latest Amnesia entry from Frictional Games – which will be getting a new mode this Halloween.

Epic Games' latest update for battle royale Fortnite adds a number of Halloween-themed outfits including an eye-catching Alan Wake skin.

October 10 2023 is a busy day for VR enthusiasts. Not only does the hotly anticipated Meta Quest 3 launch today but with Prime Day running at the same time, there's a slew of VR accessories to be had for cheaper if you already own a headset. 

North America’s WoW Tokens have hit their highest price to date, with a Monday, October 9 spike seeing the cost of the highly coveted items soar. While thankfully they’ve come down a little over the past few hours, it’s a pretty scary sight.

When cinematic legend William Friedkin died in August, most of the mournful obituaries focused on tributes to his eclectic body of work. Affectionately nicknamed “Hurricane Billy” for his force of personality and towering stature among the New Hollywood filmmakers, Friedkin produced a respectable, wide-ranging filmography, from Academy Award-sweepers like The French Connection to reappraised gems like the box-office bomb turned classic Sorcerer. Still, critics elevated one title over all the rest, one film that, even 50 years later, still has a firm grasp on popular culture: The Exorcist, which bears the tagline “the scariest movie of all time.”

Here’s a stat that might not surprise you: The average mobile phone user gets an average of 14 spam calls each month.

Mario fans who have been getting their hands on Super Mario Bros. Wonder's demo have pointed out that Luigi constantly looks angry during gameplay, just like he did nearly a decade ago in Mario Kart 8.

In one of the worst cyber attack cases, it has been revealed that cybercriminals hacked into a payment gateway account and made off with as much as Rs. 16,800 crore! Thane Police have registered an FIR, which states that a group of persons allegedly hacked into a payment gateway service provider company's account and siphoned off the funds from different bank accounts. What is even more shocking is that these cybercriminals managed to do this over a period of time without anyone actually finding out.

Gloves, Boots, and Gear replace the traditional Perk system we all know and love from previous Call of Duty games. These items function similarly to Perks, and you can assemble incredibly unique combinations. As you may expect, gear in MW3 isn’t created equally. With this in mind, let me show you the best gear in the MW3 beta, ranked.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales opens with a smooth rumble of the Dual Sense controller and into 125th Street subway station, Harlem. The follow-up to 2018’s Spider-Man, knows exactly where it needs to place Miles to set the stage for a world that celebrates its title character’s culture. As Miles sets foot into the neighborhood he will soon fight to protect, we immediately see what sets this Spider-Man apart. Effectively known as the “Main Street” of Harlem, this neighborhood is known as a center of commerce, brimming with cultural significance. It’s where we first see Miles Morales take center stage. We’re greeted with the ice and snow-packed streets of New York at Christmas, and a thumping beat that Miles bops his head to. There is a sense of community and culture that Insomniac has taken meticulous care to craft.

This review of When Evil Lurks comes from the film’s U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest 2023.

Hype has been steadily building for the imminent arrival of the Meta Quest 3, but an industry analyst has poured cold water over the impending launch with some shocking allegations about expected sales figures for the VR headset.

Breaking Bad is undeniably one of the best series to ever air in the history of television. Beginning in 2008, the absolutely hilarious, gripping, and adrenaline-pumping crime drama spanned over five seasons and wrapped things up with a pretty shocking ending. In celebration of that said finale's 10th anniversary, the series’ creator and showrunner Vince Gilligan has come out and said that maybe, just maybe, there is more of the tale left to tell and that there is a chance Breaking Bad may continue. 

On Tuesday, Atlus uploaded a gameplay video for Persona 5 Tactica detailing the remaining members of the Phantom Thieves.

Standing as yet another testament to how you can do anything and everything in Baldur’s Gate 3, a player and his brother have collected every single chest they’ve come across in the game. It’s an impressive feat that’s both ridiculous and kind of brilliant. It also makes you stand back and say, “Why?” But then again, why not?

Dublin-based Keywords Studios has laid off its Dragon Age: Dreadwolf QA team contracted to assist BioWare Edmonton in Canada.

After you bring down the Corpo AV, you will begin the Life During Wartime mission while playing Cyberpunk 2077. This involves trying to get close enough to the site of the crash to turn off the rocket turret that is on the AV’s roof. This mission can be played out a couple of different ways, depending on your build.

The concept of a mean-mugging, coffee-guzzling, mystery-solving Pikachu who talks like a human was kind of difficult to wrap one’s mind around before Nintendo dropped its first Detective Pikachu game back in 2018. The original 3DS point-and-click’s simplistic gameplay and forgettable supporting characters both left much to be desired. But its sharp sense of humor and focus on depicting the world from pokémon’s perspectives solidified it as one of the larger franchise’s most inspired spinoffs, which led to a live-action film adaptation that left little doubt of there being a Detective Pikachu Switch sequel on the way.

There are exorcism movies and Exorcist movies, and the two have never really been the same thing.

Lies of P has some of the tightest parry timing I've come across in any action game, but it also gives you one of the most overpowered items I've ever seen in a Soulslike, let alone a true Souls game: an honest-to-god auto-parry. 

October has rolled in, and along with it, new Monster Hunter Now events. So what’s in store? Well, you won’t be shocked to hear that there’s a Halloween event on the cards, but before that there’s a pretty vibrant surprise.

Push Square has gone mainstream – well, at least as mainstream as you can get when it comes to UK quiz shows. As spotted and shared by reader BlaizeV (seriously, we’d never have known about this without you), our humble PlayStation community was referenced in a 29th September episode of Tipping Point. In the show, host Ben Shephard asks contestants which Sony console family the website is based on.

I get the concept behind the way Bethesda designed Starfield's food items. In the year 2330, humanity has become a spacefaring species, blasting across the galaxy in spaceships—and just as people are sealed inside spacesuits for protection, food is kept inside clear little plastic containers.

We may be close to the end when it comes to all the regulation that has stopped the Microsoft – Activision deal from finalizing.

Immersive sci-fi sim Core Decay has received a brand new trailer, showing off a range of different playstyles that are quite reminiscent of Deus Ex and System Shock. 

Ultimate Team is EA’s controversial cash cow that brings in hundreds of millions of dollars to the publisher’s coffers every year. While FIFA players are well used to EA Sports adding expensive and powerful card packs later in the year-long life of the annualised football game, with the launch of FC 24, the community has reacted in shock to a $30 pack available to buy before the game even properly launched.

PlatinumGames’ exiting vice president, Hideki Kamiya, has given the clearest indication yet that he’s likely not going to be involved in his flagship Project GG following his departure from the company.

Cyborg espionage game Core Decay has a new trailer out showcasing different approaches to the conundrum of being locked inside one of its sprawling, post-societal-collapse facilities. Our semi-cyber protagonist is faced with escaping a facility, which means traversing a living area to the director's office to flip a switch. The gameplay trailer showcases violent, social, and stealthy approaches to the goal.

In a shocking incident in Nashik, Maharashtra, a mobile phone exploded while it was charging inside a house, resulting in a powerful blast. The explosion was so intense that it shattered the glass windows of the house and even damaged vehicles parked on the street. This incident stands out as one of the most powerful mobile explosions ever recorded.

As part of today's splash of PSVR2 news from Sony, it's been confirmed Tiger Blade will launch for the headset on 17th November 2023. Catch the trailer above to see this flashy, stylish game in action, complete with colourful sword fighting and gunplay in an alternate take on Korea.

Now that the excellent Baldur's Gate 3 has been out in the wild for a while, all kinds of interesting data can be gleaned, such as how players, from the safety and privacy of their own homes, choose to experience an innovative new RPG. Thanks to stats provided by developer Larian Studios and posted on the PlayStation Blog, when given nearly limitless options, we now know that most people pretty much want to play the same way they did in Skyrim, as a stealthy archer.

There is a moment in Gen V, the Gen Z-centric spinoff of X-rated superhero satire The Boys, that actually managed to shock me. I’m going to talk about what that moment was, but first I need to talk a little about what it wasn’t.

Baldur's Gate 3 lets you multiclass—opening the floodgates to a lot of min-maxing nonsense. In case you're a single-class devotee (or just haven't played the game yet), multiclassing means «taking levels» in several different classes. So for example, you could be a level 5 fighter and a level 3 barbarian on a level 8 character.

Asteroids are massive space rocks that travel through space and worryingly, some of these also make a close approach to Earth. NASA tracks such asteroids and categorizes them as potentially hazardous or non-hazardous objects depending on their size and proximity to the planet. Now, a new study says that an asteroid can hit Earth in the next 159 years. Considering that an asteroid caused the extinction of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, this is shocking news. Now, the prediction of an asteroid collision in the near future is scary. Know what the expert says about this asteroid impact.

Games use all sorts of tricks to ease performance load, and while Starfield has had its fair share of optimisation woes (though Todd Howard sees things differently) it's not an exception to that rule. 

Sonic fans can't believe how difficult Frontiers' Final Horizon update is, with players particularly struggling with the trial towers and their lack of checkpoints.

This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we bid farewell to PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who has announced his departure from the company after almost three decades of service.

The Boys spin-off Gen V might be following a completely different story to the main series as we meet a bunch of college-age Supes navigating frat parties and superpowers, but there’s plenty of nods to the main season.

Apple launched its iPhone 15 series at the Wonderlust event on September 12, and the devices went on sale on September 22. However, even before Apple started shipping these devices, the iPhone 15 series sold out for weeks, leaving prospective customers empty-handed. While this shortage is not limited to any one variant, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which is the top-of-the-line device, is seeing the most demand, with the device being sold out until November in some places. Although initial reports attributed this to Apple struggling to make components required for its top-end iPhone, a new report has surfaced that has shed light on another reason behind this shortfall - scalpers.

Here is the weekly Mythic+ tuning on the Patch 10.2 PTR which includes a pretty large rework to the interrupt boss Archmage Sol in Everbloom.

Dan Harmon and Warner Bros have talked about making a Rick and Morty movie.

Creative Assembly has begun a redundancy consultation process following news its Sega-published game Hyenas has ended development, admitting this «may, unfortunately, result in job losses».

Set in a pulp adventure 1932 where secret societies seek to use magic to reshape the world, The Lamplighters League combines a strategic campaign layer with real-time stealth and tactical combat to deliver a twist on the tactics genre that's fun, but doesn't do anything too radically new. It took a bit to grow on me, with a really slow start to get through, but once it gets up to speed this sometimes absurd, always entertaining pulp story is a blast that plays through to a memorable finale.

In a shock move, Sega has canceled Hyenas, an extraction shooter from Total War developer Creative Assembly that was thought to be in the final stages of development.

Here is the datamined class and tier set tuning for Patch 10.2 PTR Build 51521.

At this point everyone knows just how much of a game-changer Update 2.0 for Cyberpunk 2077 is. Total gameplay system overhauls, fundamental changes to combat, etc., etc. But there's one adjustment that deserves to be singled out and paraded through the streets — an adjustment that finally fixes what is perhaps the most infamously bad moment in Cyberpunk 2077.

It’s a big, unexpected day for Sony PlayStation fans. New information has surfaced online that the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Jim Ryan, will be stepping down from the company. What might shock some fans is that while Jim Ryan only served as the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment since 2019, they were a part of the Sony company all the way back in 1994. Details are scarce, but details are coming from a reliable source online, along with a press release that offers a bit more insight. 

are now available. Last week’s chapter shocked the anime community, making one of the characters trend all over the internet. What will happen after that? Here is a guide on the .

If at first you don't succeed, patch, patch, and patch again. You might already have noticed, but Cyberpunk 2077 is having a bit of a renaissance this month, on the back of its sweeping 2.0 update and yesterday's release of its (really rather good) Phantom Liberty expansion. In No Man's Sky-like fashion, Cyberpunk seems like it's finally making good three years after its disastrous launch, and hey, it looks like people are taking notice.

Some fighting game fans have a favourite side to play on, whether it's the left of the screen on the Player 1 side or the right of the screen as Player 2. While there is normally no gameplay advantage that comes from starting on either side, some players find input commands easier from the left or right. But when it comes to Mortal Kombat 1, it turns out there's a very good reason to pick Player 1.

In a piece of impressive news, billionaire Elon Musk's Humanoid robot Optimus, which was announced by Tesla in August 2021, has been learning skills that will shock and awe you. Optimus was captured in a video doing multiple variations and postures of yoga, which is making the internet go wild. Elon Musk's creations have often stunned the public and now, the humanoid robot has become the latest gadget to stun the Internet. Know what the Humanoid robot, Optimus can do.

Warning! Spoilers ahead!

Chevy Chase is once again addressing his time on NBC'S Community – but this time he's giving it to us straight.

Blizzard has updated the Wrath Classic 3.4.3 with a new Patch and shared Development Notes. Additionally, Glyph of Omen of Clarity has been changed to include a -5% physical damage dealt modifier.

Blizzard has updated the Wrath Classic 3.4.3 with a new Patch, as well as set Icecrown Citadel live for the final round of raid testing. Unmentioned in the Development Notes is a new change to Glyph of Omen of Clarity, which includes a -5% physical damage dealt modifier.

Yesterday, the gaming world received a massive bombshell when Hideki Kamiya was revealed to be leaving PlatinumGames. This was so shocking because this was a studio he helped co-found, and he was “the face” of the developer in many respects. He was the director of many titles and was a creative force behind the scenes that led to many successful games and IP. However, the company revealed that he’ll be leaving next month to do something else. The question was, “What would he do next?” While we don’t have the full answer to that question just yet, we can say that Kamiya has spoken out on his departure.