Following its sudden closure in August 2024, long-running video game magazine Game Informer is officially back. The staff announced the news earlier today in an official blog post, writing, "The whole team has returned, and we cant wait to connect with you again."In the same post, Game Informer editor-in-chief Matt Miller went on to explain that the outlet was given a "new lease on life" following its acquisition by game studio Gunzilla. Furthermore, Gunzilla also rehired the entire team of folks working at Game Informer prior to its closure. Miller stated that because of this rehiring, the team is confident that they can maintain an "unbroken identity of who we are and what we represent."Gunzilla, which is currently working on upcoming battle royale game Off the Grid, reportedly assured Game Informer staff that the company will operate independently of the studio, with "100 percent of the decisions around what we cover and how we do so" coming from the site's editorial team. According to Miller, Gunzilla Games sees "the same potential in Game Informer as our team does, and their encouragement to do so ethically and free of outside pressure is laudable."Continue Reading at GameSpot

The Phantom Blade Zero devs sat down with us to talk about they are inspired by kung-fu action films and want to bring back the energy of early PlayStation 1 and 2 era games.

Final Fantasy is one of the most popular JRPG franchises of all time, with the bulk of its games focusing on character-driven stories where a band of heroes save the day by any means necessary. So, as one would expect, several bonds and relationships are formed between characters during these adventures.

Bennett has always been known as one of the most powerful 4-star characters in Genshin Impact. He's so overpowered to the point that HoYoverse can't powercreep him, since whoever powercreeps Bennett in Genshin Impact needs to be as strong as a 5-star character.

Long-time holders of the BattleTech tabletop gaming license, Catalyst Game Labs, have something surprisingly grim and dark to talk about at this weeks AdeptiCon convention. BattleTech: Gothic, formally revealed on Facebook, adds massive monsters to the game of big stompy robots. Its described as a themed-box release something entirely new for the roughly 40-year-old franchise. The announcement of the complete, stand-alone game experience arrived Monday alongside a 72-page lore dump, the first entry in what the publisher is calling the BattleTech Continuum.While theres no mention of a launch window, best-selling author Michael Stackpole said on Bluesky that he has been tapped to write related fiction. Polygon has reached out to Catalyst for more information.The scaly, winged kaiju or abominations as theyre being called are being billed in the lore as just a continuation of the Inner Spheres penchant for creating planet-crushing, biosphere-destroying weapons of mass destruction. In addition to nuclear weapons and virus bombs, now these evil scientists can graft biological material together in roughly the same way that McDonalds turns living chickens into boot-shaped nuggets.BattleTech was originally born as a tabletop wargame in the 1980s, and went on to become both a tabletop role-playing game, a boutique retail arcade experience, and a series of popular video games published by Microsoft. It lives on digitally through Piranha Games Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, and the recent stand-alone spin-off called MechWarrior 5: Clans. But since Harebrained Schemes walked away from its BattleTech turn-based strategy video game, its the tabletop game from Catalyst that has maintained the most momentum with diehard fans. The company revealed in 2023 that it had sold more than 9 million pre-assembled miniatures and that was before it raised $7.5 million to help launch BattleTech: Mercenaries.Trouble is, at least some of those diehard fans on social media dont seem all that hyped about this particular thematic turn. More than a few are asking cheekily if this is an early April Fools joke. Well see what shakes out in-person as fans stop by the Catalyst booth in Milwaukee, the new home for AdeptiCon, this weekend.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.There may not be a lot of competition in the bone conduction headphone (BCH) space, but Shokz still stands out from the rest by a large margin. Its latest flagship headphones, the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2, came out last fall and are excellent for anyone looking to get that open-ear feel when working out outdoors, as I explained in my review. You can get them for $149.95 (originally $179.95) during Amazon's Big Spring Sale, the lowest price they've ever been on Amazon, according to price tracking tools. Shokz New OpenRun Pro 2 Brand:SHOKZ, Color: Black, Ear Placement: Open Ear $149.95 at Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 $179.95 Save $30.00 Get Deal Get Deal $149.95 at Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 $179.95 Save $30.00 If you've never used BCHs before, the main thing you need to understand is that they send vibrations through your bones instead of through the air, which makes them perfect for underwater listening (or just the shower). This usually comes with the trade-off of worse audio quality, usually in the lower registers. But that's where Shokz focused its attention on the OpenRun Pro 2. They have dual-driver bass technology that sends bass sound through the air, making these a hybrid BCH and open-ear with regular speakers. As the name implies, the OpenRun Pro 2 are made with runners in mind. They're lightweight, coming in at 1.02 ounces, have an IP55 water resistance rating, and have a battery life of up to 12 hours with quick charging (a five-minute charge gives 2.5 hours of juice). The companion app comes with EQ settings and the headphones have Bluetooth 5.3. What makes these BCHs stand out for me are the lack of rattling vibration that tickles the ears when certain pitches are played. Keep in mind that if you choose to not use the dual-driver bass technology through the app and stick to 100% BCH, the ticklish vibration is present. But that hybrid technology is what makes the OpenRun Pro 2 the best sounding BCHs in the market. And this is the best time to buy them.Shopping for tech? Lifehacker can help you make the right decision. Browse our tech reviews and head-to-head comparisons for everything from laptops and smartwatches to e-bikes and home gyms. Subscribe to our deals newsletter,Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox, or browse our best-of lists directly on Amazon, including:The Best Over-Ear HeadphonesThe Best Wireless EarbudsThe Best Adjustable Dumbbell SetsThe Best Projectors

The modern internet is full of annoyances designed to make your experience worse. Sites disable copying, right-clicks, and shove all kinds of massive banners and autoplaying videos in your face, even when they hide the content you're there for. If this kind of thing bothers you, and you happen to browse on your iPhone or Mac, there is a solution: the StopTheMadness Pro app ($15). It works with Safari on your iPhone or Mac, and with Firefox and Chrome for Mac.StopTheMadness Pro is a one-stop solution to reclaiming the internet. It has so many features that it's hard to list them all in one article, but I'll highlight the ones I like the most (for context, I primarily use it with Safari on Mac). If my brief rundown isn't enough for you, once you install the extension, you can also of course click its icon in the toolbar to see everything it can do. This can be a bit overwhelming, since the General tab itself lists over 50 features, but the extension enables a good set of defaults to get you started. If you don't have the time to immediately check out every feature, the defaults and my recommendations will still take care of a large number of annoyances for you.That said, once you are ready to experiment more, you can go to StopTheMadness Pro's website to learn more about each feature. Note that, when on Chrome and Firefox, the app uses a non-standard installation method, but you can easily follow the prompts in the app to install and update the extension whenever needed.Regain control over videos on the internet Credit: Pranay Parab My favorite feature in StopTheMadness Pro is its ability to stop autoplaying videos on all websites. Even though I've disabled autoplay in all my browsers' settings, I've noticed that many websites don't respect this preference. They use custom video players that make it hard to stop playback, and sometimes those videos start playing at full voume. StopTheMadness Pro's General tab has a feature called "Stop autoplaying audio and video," which has worked on all the websites I've visited since enabling it. For instance, I visit a website for sports scores that has a habit of embedding a live stream of its postgame analysis into other posts. This starts playing unmuted even if I'm not actively on the live blog tab. StopTheMadness Pro was able to block this, which is a big relief.The extension can also make YouTube very usable for you. It can skip ads, show the picture-in-picture button even if you don't have YouTube Premium, set the default video quality, and automatically enable subtitles for you. Coupled with that, it can force all websites to use the native audio and video controls on your iPhone and Mac. This means that if you dislike YouTube's custom video player (or that of any other site), you can use Apple's native controls instead.Block tracking and annoyances Credit: Pranay Parab On the Mac, you can use StopTheMadness Pro's keyboard shortcuts to perform useful functions such as copying a link without clicking or right-clicking it. Hover the cursor over a link and press Command-C to copy it. Check out the extension's Keyboard section to see other useful shortcuts, but that's not all. The Tab Rules section lets you decide what happens once you click a link. You can force the browser to open it in the same tab, a background tab, in a new active tab, or even open some links in the browser of your choice.When I first bought this extension a few years ago, it was to circumvent copy-paste blocks on websites and to bypass Google's AMP pages on my iPhone. It still does those things quite well, and you can use it to reclaim the ability to right-click, copy, and paste on websites that block it. Since then, it's evolved to block many other annoyances, such as the hideous "Sign in with Google" pop-up that appears on Reddit and many other sites. It also removes tracking parameters from most links you click, and in case it can't remove them, you can go to the extension's Trackers tab and add the necessary parameters manually. StopTheMadness Pro can also automatically expand shortened URLs for you, thereby stopping link tracking via URL shorteners.Although this extension is not an adblocker, it also allows you to hide annoyances on any webpage with its element hiding feature. Click the Hide Page Element button after opening the extension via the toolbar, and select the annoyance you wish to block.Advanced features worth checking out Credit: Pranay Parab Before getting to the advanced features, it's worth mentioning that StopTheMadness Pro supports site-specific settings, too. In its General tab on Mac, you'll see a + button next to My default options for all websites. You can click that button to add site-specific settings for the website you're on. When you're using the extension on your iPhone, this option appears in the Website section of the extension's menu. This lets you create custom preferences for websites that you frequent.If you're a fan of tinkering with every aspect of your web browsing experience, you can use this extension to add custom CSS or JavaScript code, replace default fonts with your own choices, or to add JavaScript snippets (as an alternative to bookmarklets). The Custom Code section lets you customize websites using CSS or JavaScript code, which will run automatically every time a page is loaded. However, the JavaScript Snippets feature in the Scripts tab is for code you'd rather run manually.I also like the Web Rules section of the extension, which allows me to open links from certain websites in a browser of my choice. I find that Chrome or its derivatives handle Google Docs or Sheets a lot better than Safari, and I used this to redirect all those links to a different browser.It's not often that one comes across a powerful browser extension that works so well. StopTheMadness Pro is exceptional and I consider it a must-have for anyone who browses the web on Apple devices. It definitely has a learning curve, but the developer's impressive documentation makes it really easy to learn more about every available feature.

Google has the pedal to the metal on its AI development. Just a few months after the debut of Gemini 2.0, the tech giant has unveiled another upgrade in Gemini 2.5. As with any new AI launch, Google is touting a strong performance on LMArena for Gemini 2.5, particularly its capabilities in coding, mathematics and science.The first model in this series is Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental. Google said this is a thinking model that's intended to provide responses grounded in more reasoning, analysis and context than the answers offered by classification- and prediction-driven models. It's a different approach than Google took with the Gemini 2.0 series, which started off with the more efficient and less expensive Flash version."With Gemini 2.5, we've achieved a new level of performance by combining a significantly enhanced base model with improved post-training," the company said in a blog post attributed to Koray Kavukcuoglu, CTO of Google DeepMind. "Going forward, were building these thinking capabilities directly into all of our models, so they can handle more complex problems and support even more capable, context-aware agents."Google had only just started rolling out Gemini 2.0 to its services, using it to power the newly added AI Mode in search and Deep Research for handling more complex queries. With today's launch, expect to hear more updates from the company about getting this latest version. Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental is available now in Google AI Studio, and Gemini Advanced members can use it directly in the Gemini app.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-releases-gemini-25-ai-model-for-complex-thinking-182352224.html?src=rss

It's your lucky day if you're looking for good deals on Apple devices. Thanks to the Amazon Spring Sale, the Apple Watch Series 10 has dropped to its lowest price to date. The smartwatch is back on sale for a record-low price of $299. That's a $100 discount. The Apple Watch SE got a discount too. The device typically retails for $249, but you can snap it up for $169. The Apple Watch Series 10 is our pick for the best smartwatch overall. That may not necessarily apply if you're an Android user, since you need an iPhone to actually use an Apple Watch. In any case, we gave the Apple Watch Series 10 a score of 90 in our review. Apple's current flagship smartwatch has a bigger screen, making it easier to see your notifications and health data (it's a pretty dang great device for wellness and fitness tracking). The thinner frame makes it more aesthetically pleasing too. On the downside, losing the blood oxygen feature from previous models is a bummer, but that issue was out of Apple's hands to a certain extent. It's perhaps not quite worth an upgrade if you have a Series 8 or 9 already. Apple isn't exactly reinventing the wheel here. Plus the sleep apnea detection feature that debuted alongside the Series 10 is also available on the Series 9 and Ultra 2. Still, if you're an Apple Watch newcomer or upgrading from an even older model, the Series 10 is likely your best option, especially for the sake of future proofing. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-apple-watch-series-10-is-100-off-for-the-amazon-spring-sale-184918353.html?src=rss

Apple's just announced that WWDC 2025 kicks off on June 9 with a 'special event.'