April 2023

The Bocchi the Rock manga will finally appear outside Japan, as Yen Press announced an English release. It confirmed it during its Sakura-con 2023 panel, alongside 27 other acquisitions. It has a tentative Fall 2023 release window, though there’s no exact release date yet.

Here’s Yen Press’ official announcement of the Bocchi the Rock manga English release. The tentative cover art shown in it is based on the Japanese one. Like series like Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star, it is a four-koma series.

NEW MANGA ANNOUNCEMENT: Bocchi the Rock!

Bocchi takes the stage and she’s brought her best friend—crippling anxiety! After bringing her guitar to school provokes zero interest, Hitori’s ready to shrivel up and die—until Nijika begs her to fill in for her band’s live performance! pic.twitter.com/CA7TK0xzzS

— Yen Press (@yenpress) April 8, 2023

This comes after the Japanese version passed a million copies in circulation and got a reprint.

Here’s the full list of all the Yen Press and Ize Press art books, light novels, manga, manhwa, and light novels announced at Sakura-con 2023. All of them fall into the general Fall 2023 release window.

For people wondering when Chainsaw Man volume 12 is coming out, Viz Media announced exact release dates for both it and the Buddy Stories light novel side-story collection. It also showed off the cover art for both. Buddy Stories will appear first. It will launch on July 25, 2023 and feature Denji and Power on the cover. The English version of volume 12 of the manga will appear after on October 3, 2023. It features Yoru on the front.

First, here's the Buddy Stories light novel announcement. It first debuted in Japan in November 2021 and features art from mangaka Tatsuki Fujimoto to go with Sakaku Hishikawa's stories.

Cover reveal!
Chainsaw Man: Buddy Stories releases July 25, 2023.

Pre-order now: https://t.co/c4Mzh385e6 pic.twitter.com/99L1IhOoht

— VIZ (@VIZMedia) April 8, 2023

Next, here's how Chainsaw Man volume 12 looks. This is the first volume to cover the second part of the series and features one of the new lead characters, Yoru. It picks up the story from chapter 98.

Few seem to have noticed, but Netflix is quietly building a service that's home to the best in mobile games - and one that hints at something bigger on the horizon.

Yes, we've seen these Silicon Valley types trying to 'do games' before. Google tried and quickly failed with Stadia. Apple Arcade is...good, but fading fast. Amazon, meanwhile, seems to be all over the place with its MMO, steaming service Luna and handful of other projects.

Netflix is different, though. Its primary business is entertainment, not to sell ads (Google), phones (Apple) or offer free next-day delivery on slight variations of things you've already bought (Amazon). And you can see that rather more discerning eye in the first batch of Netflix games, which have all arrived in the last 18 months. There's now over 50 in total, and more added every week or so.

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We don’t get Griss as a playable character in Fire Emblem Engage, but after the Fell Xenologue DLC campaign someone does add Gregory to their army. He’s somebody who’s absolutely fantastic with magic. Also, like Madeline, he’s a fairly straightforward character to prepare and build to use in your army.

Possible Gregory Classes in Fire Emblem Engage

Gregory is a Sage when he joins your army, and it absolutely works for him. His highest stats are magic and resistance. Everything else is average at best. So focus on making sure he always uses magic whenever possible.

Leaving him as a Sage is a bit questionable though, just because Spell Harmony conflicts with his personal skill. Survival Plan means his avoidance increases by 20 if there are more enemies than allies around him. But Spell Harmony increases his attack based on how many other tome-wielding allies are around him. You could make him a High Priest and have him heal allies around him. However, with his magic stat being as high as it is, I’d go with Mage Knight. That gives him more movement and increases his speed with the Chaos Style skill that increases speed by three if he attacks people with weapons with magic or people with tomes with a weapon.

512GB Micro SD cards have continued to come down in price, and today we've spotted a great deal on a 512GB option from Integral that offers read speeds up to 180MB/s. It's available for £39.99, down from £48, which is the best price we've seen for this spec.

That makes this Micro SD a premiere option for Steam Deck owners, who will benefit from faster copying times when transferring game directories from the internal storage to Micro SD or downloading from the internet, and game load times should also be as speedy as anything with this A2-rated drive.

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Numskull's next Silent Hill statue is here, and it turns out the silhouette at the end of the Bubble Head nurse statue reveal did indeed tease the arrival of Silent Hill 3's protagonist, Heather.

You can't throw a stone on the internet without hitting a Silent Hill figurine, but it's a rare thing indeed to find one that isn't a nurse or a Pyramid Head. Enter Numskull's second Silent Hill collectible, Heather Morris*.

Standing at ten inches tall, the statue references several elements from Silent Hill 3, including Heather’s outfit, her flashlight and gun, as well as Silent Hill’s Lakeside Amusement Park and its mascot, Robbie the Rabbit. Like the Bubble Head Nurse, the statue has been officially sanctioned by publisher Konami.

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American McGee's attempt to develop a third instalment in his fan-favourite Alice series "is at an end".

In a public statement posted to McGee's Patreon, the developer said he had "exhausted every option for getting a new Alice game made" after IP holder Electronic Arts reportedly "decided to pass on the project based on an internal analysis of the IP, market conditions, and details of the production proposal".

Shortly after the completion of the Design Bible, I resumed talks with Electronic Arts regarding our efforts to get a new game made," McGee explains. "They were presented with the Design Bible and a Production Plan (produced in collaboration with Virtuos Games) outlining the schedule, budget, team, and design for the new game's production.

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Sometimes, games use their art style to build on or set their tone and themes. Other times, they have tones and themes that go completely against what you’d expect based on the artistic direction. Void Terrarium 2 falls into the latter category. You play as a cute little robot named Robbie, you protect the absolutely adorable Toriko, and you get to customize the terrarium Toriko lives in with cute decor and plants and things. Then, you get to the story.

Void Terrarium 2's narrative is sad, touching, and definitely one of the game’s strong points; there’s a lot to it and it’s not afraid to go into some darker subject matter. For starters, it’s set in a post-apocalyptic world in which the atmosphere has become heavily contaminated to the point of being uninhabitable. You and your sentient computer friend factoryAI must protect Toriko, the last surviving human, from both the toxins in the air and the slow progression of the disease plaguing her body. All the while, you have to learn what exactly her illness is in order to try to find a way to cure it. For how nice and cutesy everything looks, the story is the total opposite in a very good way.

A playable demo is now available for Wild Hearts.

The free trial for Omega Force's take on Monster Hunter formula is downloadable now on current-gen console systems, PS5 and Xbox Series X.

You'll need an EA account to play but once you're all signed up, you'll get access to the "latest content" for free from today until 13th April, 2023, where you'll be free to explore the game "right up to the gates of Minato".

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EA's upcoming magic FPS, Immortals of Aveum, will reportedly release in July.

Created by Ascendant Studios and released by EA Originals, the shooter is only officially slated to come to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S at some indeterminate time in 2023.

According to the-ever reliable dataminer billbil-kun, however, the specific release date is 20th July.

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Former Halo director, Joseph Staten, has left Microsoft.

Veteran of Halo development at both Bungie and 343 Industries, Staten left Microsoft's blockbuster space shooter franchise in January 2023, but it was reported at the time that he would remain at Microsoft.

Now, however, it seems Staten is leaving his position as creative director at Microsoft entirely.

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Jack Krauser returns as one of the more technical characters in the roster of Resident Evil 4 The Mercenaries. To unlock Krauser in The Mercenaries mode in Resident Evil 4 remake, players must obtain an A rank on any stage as Luis Serra. Unlocking characters is no longer attached to stages, so pick your favorite and rack in those combos. However, Krauser is a little different this time around.

His bow now has a sight and fires explosive arrows. They're also not as powerful as they were in the original version of The Mercenaries in Resident Evil 4. Where Krauser truly shines is his melee mode and with his knife. Players can effectively infinitely combo enemies and pull in more time through melee kills with Krauser. Additionally, in order to unlock HUNK in Resident Evil 4 remake The Mercenaries, players will need to tackle any level as Krauser.

Krauser is one of four playable characters in Resident Evil 4 The Mercenaries. He appeared in the original version of this optional game mode, which also included the ability to transform his arm to deal massive damage to enemies in a straight line. This ability doesn't return, but Krauser is still formidable all the same.

The Resident Evil 4 remake is immediately available on the PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, and PS5. The Mercenaries mode is immediately available as free DLC.

Women in Games CEO Marie-Claire Isaaman has released a statement asking if the games industry is "going backwards" following reports that "multiple folks" were assaulted or spiked at this year's GDC event.

In a public statement, Isaaman reflected on employment stats and revealed that whilst "both male and female gamers experienced similarly high levels of toxicity, showing that toxicity is an issue across the entire gaming community", "the experience that girls and women encounter are often much darker and threatening".

"Sexist stereotypes and being aggressively quizzed about their gaming skills often lead to more violent verbal abuse and threats of rape," Isaaman says. "Even more disturbingly, the abuse doesn’t always stop once players leave the game – some instances manifest into serious consequences outside of gaming, including stalking on other platforms and threats of this transferring into real life.

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"Wholesome narrative puzzle adventure" Tin Hearts is coming to Nintendo Switch.

Tin Hearts came to life as a VR game that Wes described as "part Lemmings, part Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol", but it's now coming to Switch on 20th April, with a release on PC and current- and last-gen consoles a month later on 16th May.

Winner of the 'Most Wanted Nintendo Switch Game' Accolade during Gamescom 2022, Tin Hearts is described as "an immersive, narrative-based, puzzle adventure wrapped up in a powerful tale of love and compromise".

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I watched The Super Mario Bros Movie during its opening week with the intent of writing this Easter eggs and references article, only to realize that the movie is nothing but Easter Eggs and references. A thorough roundup would be indistinguishable from a wholesale rundown of the entire movie.

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Everyone's talking about how this The Last of Us HBO TV show is the best and how it's an example of a video game adaptation done right. Not to mention there's The Super Mario Bros Movie out now, acting as an adaptation of Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser's story. It might get people wondering what else is out there to watch. Well, now's as good of a time as any to share some suggestions as to also admirable adaptations worth watching.

Steins;Gate was honestly an amazing show with a wonderful aesthetic, great pacing, and a genuinely gripping story. I've never played the original visual novel but from what I've heard, it seems to be a fairly faithful adaptation that did the source material justice. While it didn't necessarily make me want to play the game (I mean, it kind of feels like the Steins;Gate show did a great job of covering everything already), it did make me go around and recommend it to everybody and anybody. So if you've never watched Steins;Gate and you like sci-fi with a touch of surprisingly sweet romance, I highly suggest that you put that on your to-watch list. -- Stephanie

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.

First, as many of you already know, the site was a bit quiet as many of the regularly scheduled programs not airing. That's because the Giant Bomb staff travelled to San Diego to attend the DreamHack convention. If you missed the livestreams that featured the Giant Bomb staff, don't worry, as most of them will be on the site shortly.

In the meantime, maybe consider the return of The Power Bombcast which discussed WrestleMania 39 or the The Super Mario Bros. Movie Spoilercast! In the future, be prepared for the live Voicemail Dump Truck and fun coverage of Universal's Super Nintendo World!

GB Chat and the Twitch channel will be up during DreamHack for segments that feature GB, GameSpot, and Fandom employees. Please keep things civil in both channels and be aware that your conduct will be observed and moderated if necessary.

Finally, I want to thank all of you for dropping kind and supportive comments in the last Spotlight when I announced it was both @marino and I's 13th anniversary as moderators on the site. It means a lot, and it was incredibly touching to see some usernames I have not seen in a while. With all of that in mind, let's jump into the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight.

The Last Of Us Part 1 launched on PC a little over a week ago in a less than adequate state. It has been heavily criticised for bugs, crashes and performance issues in the days since, despite several patches.

Now there's another new patch, 1.0.2.0, which Naughty Dog say "addresses some crashes, improves performance in some areas, and fixes several gameplay and UI issues including some animation, texture, and lighting bugs."

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Mr. Death returns in Resident Evil 4 remake through The Mercenaries mode. HUNK, like other characters in the Resident Evil 4 remake The Mercenaries mode, is relatively easy to unlock. Like Luis, players will need to use a specific character to obtain an A rank to unlock the iconic Umbrella soldier.

HUNK is the final character players can unlock in The Mercenaries mode in Resident Evil 4 remake. In order to unlock HUNK, you will need to reach A rank on any stage using Jack Krauser. Like in the original version of The Mercenaries, HUNK has an incredibly powerful melee move that can instantly kill almost any enemy in the form of a neck snap. He is also one of two characters that can make obtaining the Handcannon through getting an S rank on every stage on a single character a lot easier.

The Mercenaries mode appeared in the original Resident Evil 4. HUNK was one of the four original characters players could unlock, the others being Ada Wong, Albert Wesker, and Jack Krauser. Previously, unlocking characters entailed clearing stages as opposed to getting a specific rank on an individual character.

The Resident Evil 4 remake is immediately available on the PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, and PS5. The Mercenaries mode is immediately available as free DLC.

Cook Serve Forever looks a lot like Vertigo Gaming's previous Cook, Serve, Delicious! series, but it puts a new spin on urgent meal prep and has a whole new story and world. It also now has an early access release date, May 8th, and a development roadmap outlining the journey to 1.0.

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For the past several years, American McGee has been crowdfunding efforts to produce a third entry in his series of action-horror games inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Those efforts produced a 414 page design bible for "Alice: Asylum", which McGee used to pitch the project to rights-holders Electronic Arts.

McGee says that Electronic Arts have decided to pass on the project. As such, McGee says he has "reached an endpoint with 'Alice' and with game production in general."

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The developers of Ark have revised their plans for the release of Ark: Survival Ascended, an Unreal Engine 5 enhanced edition of their dinosaur survival sim. It will now cost $60 rather than the previously planned $50, is no longer bundled together with ARK 2, and will instead include the remasters of Ark: Survival Evolved's several expansions - although most won't be available at launch.

Studio Wildcard also went into more detail as to why this upgraded version is no longer a free update, and why they feel it's necessary to shut down Ark: Survival Evolved's official servers.

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Last year was the 40th anniversary of John Carpenter's The Thing. Despite being released in 1982, this alien invasion movie of psychotic paranoia still holds up to this day, due to its unnerving story and near timeless practical effects.

Strangely, despite its success and cult-like status - and despite an intriguing prequel in 2011 - The Thing never received a proper sequel. Or did it? In 2002, Computer Artworks released a video game based on The Thing that continued the story where the film left off. It's not considered canon, but that doesn't stop it from being a fascinating artefact in its own right.

Computer Artworks' The Thing begins with the player at an abandoned Antarctic outpost, not long after MacReady shares that drink with Childs. In the game, you play as Captain Blake, who seems to be oddly unphased by the destruction of the Outpost, the missing crew and that gigantic flying saucer hidden beneath the snow.

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A new patch for The Last of Us Part 1 is now available for PC.

Patch 1.0.2. dropped over the bank holiday weekend, hoping to address "some crashes, improve performance in some areas, and fix several gameplay and UI issues including some animation, texture, and lighting bugs".

Naughty Dog shared news of the new update via its social media channels, confirming that the patch "addresses performance, user experience, visuals, and more", as well as "platform and hardware-specific fixes".

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Capcom has added microtransactions to Resident Evil 4 Remake two weeks after the action horror was released.

The premium content - added alongside the much-anticipated, and free, Mercenaries DLC mode - has been introduced to give players "access to a weapon's exclusive upgrade at any time".

Although there's been no formal word from Capcom that the microtransactions were coming, 11 £2.49 "Exclusive Upgrade Tickets" popped up on digital storefronts just before the weekend.

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie is off to a rip-roaring start and looks set to hit a record-breaking £296m ($368m) over the Easter weekend, making it the second-best global debut ever for an animated movie at the domestic box office.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Mario movie is projected to take £110m ($137m) over the three-day weekend, making it the US' second-best animated movie start after Incredibles 2, taking the silver from Finding Dory.

THR reports that this is Illumination's best-ever start – besting both Minions and Despicable Me – and is currently the top movie opening of the year, and the second-biggest five-day launch ever after Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which also debuted over the Easter bank holiday.

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Destiny 2 may have seen its latest expansion, Lightfall, bring its "highest concurrent players in years", but developer Bungie has publicly acknowledged that it "missed the mark on some of [its] goals".

In a candid update on the official website, the studio said that whilst the expansion "surpassed [Bungie's] sale expectations", "it's clear the initial experience we delivered on day one didn't provide the full clarity we originally planned for when we set out creating Lightfall".

"We’ve taken a broad look at community feedback across the game since launch and have been working to address several areas in the coming weeks, while also forging ahead on content for our upcoming seasons," said game director, Joe Blackburn. "Let’s get into the things we’re building and improving in response to your input on Lightfall so far."

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DF Direct Weekly goes live a day early this week, not because of any particular urge to liven up your holiday weekend (assuming you have one) but rather to make way for a raft of embargoed content we're expecting to deliver next week. In this week's show, I'm joined by my #FriendAndColleagues John Linneman and Oliver Mackenzie, with the main points of discussion covering off mooted rumours of a PlayStation handheld based on Remote Play, the not-an-April-Fool-after-all Asus ROG Ally - and to express a degree of disappointment that Microsoft has banned access to emulation for Xbox Series consoles.

Let's tackle the PlayStation handheld story first of all. It's worth pointing out that Sony has made no official confirmation, and we're talking about a rumour here - but an interesting one nonetheless. First of all, the idea is that this would be a relatively cheap device, tapping into the PS5's local streaming capabilities as opposed to some kind of Steam Deck-like device, built around local gaming and using a low-power AMD SoC. From a Digital Foundry perspective, the latter option is certainly more interesting and from a viability perspective, there's much to commend it - assuming that Sony were to tap into the latest 4nm process technology. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's exactly what the Asus ROG Ally does.

EA has dropped a new – and final – gameplay trailer for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

The teaser, which was released alongside the weekend's Star War Celebration extravaganza, gives us our final two minutes of footage before the game releases at the end of the month.

You can check it out below:

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NieR Automata continues to receive new goods to promote its anime adaptation. This time around, the NieR Automata protagonists 2B, 9S, and A2 turn into cat androids in this new line of merchandise. The keychains will be available for sale on retail stores and online from April 14, 2023. Each one costs 660 JPY (roughly $5 USD). A limited quantity is now available for pre-order from the Aniplex Plus and the Animate online stores.

Behaviour Interactive is reverting Dead By Daylight's healing system change following player feedback.

Behaviour figured that the change – which saw the time to heal slowed from 16 to 24 seconds – would be contentious, and said that it would keep "an extra close eye on this change to see how it would play out".

"After reviewing player feedback, we found that many of you agreed that the speed which you heal others was already in a good spot prior to the update," the team explained in an update. "This change also had knock-on effects elsewhere in the game, making effects like Mangled and Hemorrhage stronger and making ‘slugging’ (leaving Survivors in the dying state) even more effective.

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Physical copies of Castle of Shikigami 2 on Switch will release later this year in the US and Europe.

Whilst Red Art Games stopped short of revealing when, exactly, the physical editions will be ready, in a press release the studio said that the "reworked" scrolling shooter – the 2021 PC version of which sits on a "positive" score on Steam – is set to come in 2023.

"Castle of Shikigami 2 is a "story-driven bullet-hell shooting game that first appeared in arcades in 2003 and was later ported to home video game consoles such as the SEGA Dreamcast and Nintendo GameCube," the publisher teases.

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In collaboration with Illumination and Nintendo, Truff released a series of Super Mario Bros. movie hot sauces. With a total of three different hot sauces available through the collection, these condiments appear in bottles inspired by notable characters in the Super Mario Bros. series, this being, Mario, Peach, and Toad. Each hot sauce is infused with truffle, which is apt given how synonymous mushrooms are with the Mario franchise. However, collaboration products, especially food products can be something of a hit or miss, and these pungent hot sauces may not be for everyone.

This is the first time I’ve ever reviewed a food product, but there is without a shadow of a doubt that I love to eat. Outside of writing about and reviewing games, I love to head to local restaurants and try new dishes, seasonal foods, and barbecue with friends. So naturally, I leapt at the offer to give these hot sauces a try.

The packaging of the Truff collaboration sauces themselves are great, each in a glass bottle featuring a slightly textured label that has a print of a specific Super Mario Bros. character. There is even gold inlaid into some of the printed text, which attempts to sell the consumer on the general quality of the product itself. It doesn’t feel cheap or like it was created without thought. It’s clear that both Illumination and Nintendo wanted to create a stand-out collaboration project to celebrate the release of the film.

My favourite Zelda moments generally don't have much to do with Zelda. They're not moments of heroism or even action, to be honest. If anything, they tend towards the opposite: a little change in the world that comes unannounced, an accidental glimpse of something from just the right angle in a quiet moment when I think I'm busy doing something else.

I'm talking about moments like the one in Link to the Past where you climb the mountain and the lovely plump, rounded trees of Hyrule which you've spent so much time with up-close are suddenly seen from a distance, far below you. Still plump, still rounded, but coming together to form something larger than their individual selves - a forest!

There's another moment, from Wind-Waker, that I love just as much. It's Dragon Roost Island, an early part of the game, and I guess I'm climbing towards a boss. Outside, hopping around on the wind-cleaned rock, I'm messing about with the eyeglass and I see a distant part of the same island, the same cliff, where one of those Kargaroc birds is sat in their straw nest. Simultaneously goofy and rather regal, this is a creature I haven't seen up close yet, so this is a glorious fortuitous sneak at what's ahead.

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The strongest Typhlosion will appear in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet as an Tera Raid event. It will be a 7-star raid, and Typhlosion will have a Ghost Tera Type. This would make it similar to Hisuian Typhlosion if you Terastallize. However, it will still look like the normal Johto Typhlosion. [Thanks, Inside Games!]

You’ll be able to find the 7-star Ghost Tera Typhlosion raids from black crystal dens around Paldea. Since Typhlosion is not native to Paldea, this event (and future ones featuring Typhlosion) will be one of the few chances players will have to catch the Pokemon. Typhlosion is one of the starter Pokemon from both Pokemon Gold/Silver and Pokemon Legends Arceus. Since previous raids put Samurott and Decidueye in the game, players who participated in all of them should have the three Arceus starters.

The Typhlosion Tera Raid in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will run from April 14-17, 2023. It will then re-run from April 21-24, 2023. You will only be able to capture one Typhlosion per save. This means that if you caught one in the first few days of the raid, you won’t be able to get another one during the re-run.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are available on the Nintendo Switch.