Nueva investigación única Arenisca Las formaciones en las Montañas Rocosas de Colorado pueden confirmar esto tierra Experimentó una congelación masiva en todo el planeta conocida como “bola de nieve”. Hace unos 700 millones de años, la superficie de la Tierra estaba cubierta de hielo, lo que creó un clima extremo en el que la vida temprana no sólo sobrevivió sino que más tarde evolucionó hasta convertirse en complejos organismos multicelulares.
Durante décadas, la hipótesis de la Tierra bola de nieve estuvo respaldada principalmente por rocas sedimentarias costeras y modelos climáticos. Sin embargo, existen pruebas contundentes de la llegada de capas de hielo. Planeta El interior tropical ha seguido siendo difícil de alcanzar… hasta ahora. El reciente estudio, publicado en Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identificó un depósito inusual de arenisca llamado tafa, que se encuentra dentro de formaciones de granito en Pikes Peak en Colorado. Estas areniscas probablemente se formaron bajo la presión de capas de hielo, lo que respalda la teoría de la Tierra bola de nieve con nueva evidencia geológica.
La formación de arenisca de Tava está asociada a antiguas presiones glaciares
Pikes Peak, un sitio sagrado conocido por el pueblo Ute como Tavá Kaa-vi, es la fuente de las formaciones de arenisca de Tava. Investigadores Descubrió que las areniscas se formaban cuando los depósitos de arena saturados de agua se incrustaban en rocas debilitadas por el enorme peso de las capas de hielo. Las autoras principales del estudio, Christine Sidaway y Rebecca Flowers, utilizaron datación radiométrica avanzada para determinar que las areniscas de Tava evolucionaron hace unos 690 a 660 millones de años, en consonancia con el criogénico.
Utilizando minerales de hierro que se encuentran en la piedra arenisca, el equipo de Sidaway utilizó la datación con uranio y plomo para confirmar los orígenes de la piedra arenisca de Tava dentro del marco temporal de la Tierra Bola de Nieve. El equipo sugiere que las capas de hielo que cubren la masa continental tropical de Laurentia, que ahora forma parte de América del Norte, crearon las presiones necesarias para formar estas inyecciones de arenisca.
Implicaciones para comprender el pasado climático de la Tierra
El descubrimiento refuerza la hipótesis de la Tierra como bola de nieve y al mismo tiempo arroja luz sobre otros fenómenos geológicos, incluidas las “discordancias” donde la erosión ha eliminado grandes porciones del registro rocoso de la Tierra. Los hallazgos encontrados en Pikes Peak sugieren que discordancias similares pueden ser anteriores a Snowball Earth, lo que indica complejos procesos de erosión a lo largo de millones de años. Los científicos esperan que estos conocimientos conduzcan a una comprensión más profunda de la historia climática de la Tierra y los procesos que dieron forma a nuestro planeta habitable.
El rapero, compositor y actor nigeriano Folarin Falana, conocido popularmente como Falz, ha causado revuelo en las redes con su último outfit.
El hijo de SAN, Femi Falana, que se está preparando para lanzar su nuevo álbum musical 'Before the Feast', ha compartido una foto de él mismo con falda.
Dijo en su comentario que comenzaría un nuevo capítulo en su vida.
“Pronto comenzará un nuevo capítulo. 07-06-24”.
Como era de esperar, la foto recibió muchas reacciones de celebridades como Funke Akindele, Adekunle Gold, Brodashaggi y otros.
Funke Akindele escribió: “¡Ojalá pudiera enviar una nota de voz! ¡¡Folarin!! Ella tomó mi falda. Ok, ok
Adekunle Gold escribió: “Oh ma wo falda ke.
La actriz Michelle Diddy escribió: “¡FasaaaaShun!
“Egbón Potifar”, escribió Brodashage
One Switope escribió: “¿Muéstrame tu estilo? Un ánodo, sé así”.
Una Jessica Teresa escribió: “Quien te diseñó, hará el cielo gracias a esto
Un tío Mead escribió: “No, el diseñador hará el cielo. Vamos, maldita sea”.
“Folarin espera que no corras demasiado riesgo”, escribió un G-Dolls.
False no será la primera celebridad en lucir un atuendo femenino, ya que las celebridades masculinas nigerianas, a lo largo de los años, se han vuelto audaces con su declaración de moda.
En agosto de 2023, el veterano actor Richard Mofe Damijo o RMD causó revuelo cuando apareció con estilo con el cantante Mr Eazi vistiendo una falda. Para ahuyentar los rumores de homosexualidad, explicó que llevaba una falda escocesa.
Del mismo modo, el influencer nigeriano Eniluwa fue arrastrado después de que hizo una declaración de moda audaz en un evento vistiendo una falda y un mono sin brazos en el evento. Aunque dejó claro que vestía ropa escocesa, muchos lo describieron como gay.
El cantante Dibang llevó las cosas más allá cuando usó un top corto. Mientras que algunos desaprobaron su atuendo, otros lo elogiaron porque lucía en forma.
Además de esto, Timaya rompió Internet cuando compartió fotos de sí mismo usando pantalones cortos en la calle, dejando a la gente preguntándose si estaba usando pantalones cortos. Los internautas se divirtieron reaccionando a su moda, y algunos lo compararon con el rapero estadounidense Kanye West.
Lenovo has taken the wraps off its sleek, lightweight, and power-packed ThinkPad P1 Gen 7.
The new laptop supports up to a Core Ultra 9 185H CPU and users can choose between integrated Intel Arc graphics, Nvidia RTX 1000/2000/3000 Ada Generation GPUs, or an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060/4070 GPU, allowing it to handle most AI processing needs.
The ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 is the first mobile workstation to come with LPDDR5x LPCAMM2 memory, with a capacity of up to 64GB. It can accommodate 2 x PCIe 4×4 M.2 2280 SSDs for up to 8TB storage.
Crafted from premium aluminum, the laptop comes with a 16-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, and narrow bezels providing a 91.7% screen-to-body ratio. Lenovo offers a choice of three displays – FHD+ IPS, QHD+ IPS, and UHD+ OLED Touch.
Connectivity comes in the form of Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3, and the laptop sports 2 x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 1 x USB-C (10Gbps), 1 x USB-A (5Gbps), an SD Express 7.0 card reader, HDMI 2.1, and an audio jack.
The new device features a liquid metal thermal design (in select configurations) which Lenovo says “enhances cooling performance and long-term reliability, catering to critical workflows when complex tasks require maximum performance for extended periods.”
Battery life is always important in laptops, and the ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 has a 90Whr customer replaceable unit.
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
“Lenovo’s latest ThinkPad P series mobile workstations are taking a significant step forward by featuring cutting-edge Intel Core Ultra processors equipped with a dedicated neural processing engine,’ said Roger Chandler, Vice President and General Manager, Enthusiast PC and Workstation Segment, Intel.
“Designed to enhance AI PC capabilities on laptops, this technology also improves performance, power efficiency and enables superior collaboration experiences, allowing users to be creative for longer periods without the need for constant charging.”
ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 will be available from June 2024, with prices starting at $2,619.
Later this week, China will embark on the world’s second-only trip to the Moon’s far side. The goal is to collect the first rocks from inside the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, the largest and oldest impact crater on the lunar surface, and bring them back to Earth for analysis.
A stack of four spacecraft needed to complete this unprecedented and highly challenging mission, known as Chang’e-6, is now tucked into the nose of a 57-metre-tall Long March 5 rocket, waiting to lift off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Centre on southern China’s Hainan Island.
“The whole process is very complex and risky,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
But he says it’s a risk worth taking: “Samples from the SPA basin would be very interesting scientifically and tell us a lot about the history of the Moon and of the early Solar System.”
Far side science
Because the Moon is tidally locked to Earth, humans were only able to see its near side for thousands of years. In 1959, the first lunar far-side images returned by the Soviet probe Luna 3 revealed a face pocked with mountains and impact craters, in contrast to the relatively smooth near side. Scientists have since been collecting data from satellites orbiting the Moon to understand its little-known other half. In 2019, China’s Chang’e-4 became the first spacecraft to soft land and conduct surveys on the Moon’s far side.
The upcoming Chang’e-6 mission, with its landing site carefully chosen by Chinese scientists and international colleagues, aims to give the first accurate measurements of the age and composition of the geology of the Moon’s far side. It might provide key clues to why the two sides of the Moon are so different — the so-called lunar dichotomy mystery — and help test theories about the early history of the Solar System.
The SPA Basin is a vast indentation on the lower half of the far side some 2,500 kilometres wide and 8 kilometres deep. Inside the northeastern part, Li’s team has identified three potential landing areas. They believe the sites could have a variety of materials formed during repeated asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions over two billion years, and therefore could be scientifically rich.
The South Pole-Aitken Basin is the blue area in the centre of this false-colour image. The indentation is 2,500 kilometres wide.Credit: NASA/GSFC/University Of Arizona
The most likely rock to be collected is basalt — dark-coloured cooled lava — which has previously been brought back to Earth for analysis from the Moon’s near side. With the first far-side basalt samples, scientists will be able to date them and assess their chemical composition, giving clues to their formation. “Then we can make comparative studies to understand why volcanic activities happened on a much smaller scale and ended much earlier on the far side of the Moon,” says Long Xiao, a planetary scientist at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan.
Being able to pin down the SPA Basin’s age would also be a major achievement, says planetary geologist Carolyn van der Bogert from the University of Münster, Germany. It will help settle the long-standing debate about whether the Moon and the inner Solar System was battered by a massive cluster of asteroids between 4.0 and 3.8 billion years ago. If the SPA Basin is older, then it would cast doubt on the heavy bombardment theory.
Besides basalts, scientists hope that Chang’e-6 will also pick up fragments of other rocks that have been scattered during impact events. If the Chinese mission strikes ejecta the from the deeper lunar crust or mantle, it will be scientific gold.
Engineering challenges
Chang’e-6 was originally built as a backup for the Chang’e-5 mission, which successfully returned 1.73 kilograms of samples from the Moon’s near side in 2020. Because the two craft are identical, site selection for Chang’e-6’s landing was constrained to similar latitudes as Chang’e-5’s and needed a relatively flat surface, says Chunlai Li, the mission’s deputy chief designer from the National Astronomical Observatories in Beijing.
Like its predecessor, Chang’e-6 does not pre-determine its landing site but will use its instrumentation during the descent process to find the safest and most favourable spot. “The landing of Chang’e-6 would be more challenging than Chang’e-5 simply because the far side landing site is more rugged,” says Xiao.
Chang’e-6, like its twin, consists of an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a re-entry module. When the spacecraft arrives at the Moon, it will separate into two parts, with the lander and ascender headed for the lunar surface while the orbiter and re-entry module remain in orbit.
If it pulls off the difficult soft landing, the lander will drill and scoop up two kilograms of soil and rocks. The sampling process needs to be completed within 48 hours, after which the ascender is intended to blast off from the lander and return to the lunar orbiter. There it is supposed to dock and transfer the precious samples to the re-entry module for the trip home.
During the sample collection and lunar surface liftoff, the Chang’e-6 lander would be unable to directly communicate with Earth. Every command will need to go through a relay satellite named Queqiao-2. Launched last month and now operating in a highly elliptical orbit around the Moon, Queqiao-2 is more powerful than the Queqiao satellite which served the Chang’e-4 mission. Its 4.2-metre umbrella-shaped antenna has the ability to simultaneously serve up to ten spacecraft working on the Moon’s far side.
International collaboration
Chang’e-6 is also carrying scientific payloads from France, Sweden, Italy and Pakistan. The Detection of Outgassing RadoN (DORN), which will be the first French instrument on the Moon, plans to use radon released from the lunar surface as a tracer to study the origin and dynamics of the Moon’s faint atmosphere. Pierre-Yves Meslin, a planetary scientist at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse, France, says previous spacecraft have measured radon gas movement from orbit, but surface-level radon information is the missing piece of the puzzle.
The Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface, a payload developed in Sweden with funding from the European Space Agency, will seek to answer the question of why no negative ions have yet been detected on the lunar surface. Negative particles could be short-lived, formed either by atoms at the surface snatching electrons from the solar wind, or by molecules breaking apart from the high-energy solar radiation. The biggest challenge for this instrument is overheating, since it needs to face the Sun, says ESA project manager Neil Melville. But he says one hour of operation should be enough to gather the data.
Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics is sending a laser retroreflector for distance measurements. And Pakistan has piggy-backed its first lunar satellite to the Chang’e 6 orbiter, which will deploy after entering the lunar orbit.
Both surface instruments need to complete their work and send data back to Earth within the 48-hour window. “As soon as the samples lift off, the ascender will bring with it the communications and control system it shares with the lander. Even if the instruments on the lander continue to take data, there is no way to receive them here on Earth,” Li says
He says that like Chang’e-5 samples, the returned Chang’e-6 samples will be shared with the international community.
“When those samples come back to Earth, they will be like a Christmas present — whoever opens it will be happily surprised,” Bogert says.
An independent review board concluded last year that NASA’s Mars sample return mission could cost as much as US$11 billion, more than what it cost to launch the James Webb Space Telescope. In a report released today, a separate NASA review team concluded that even if the agency spent that much money, the dropoff of the samples on Earth would be delayed until 2040. The agency had originally sought to land the samples on Earth in the early 2030s.
The $11 billion price tag is “too expensive,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson at a press briefing, and “not returning the samples until 2040 is unacceptable.” Nelson said the agency “is committed to bringing at least some of the samples back” and later said NASA would return “more than 30” of the 43 planned samples.
Scaling back
NASA’s Perseverance rover has already collected more than 20 rock samples from Jezero Crater, where the rover landed in 2020. Scientists think that the crater was once filled with a lake of water, and samples from the crater and its surroundings could provide a window into the planet’s history and, perhaps, evidence of past life on the red planet.
In the agency’s original vision, a NASA spacecraft would have flown to Mars carrying a two-part retrieval system: a half-ton lander — which would have been the most massive vehicle to ever land on Mars — and a rocket to fly the lander and samples into Martian orbit. There they were to meet a spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency that would fly the samples to Earth.
Now NASA plans to solicit proposals — from companies as well as NASA centres — for a streamlined system, perhaps one that uses a lighter lander, Nicky Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said at the briefing. The deadline for proposals is 17 May, and the revised mission will be chosen later this year. Fox did not respond directly to reporters’ questions about when the samples will reach Earth under the new scheme.
NASA recommends spending $200 million of its planetary-science budget in 2025 on assessing alternative architectures for Mars sample return, Fox said. Dedicating any more money to the mission threatened to “cannibalize” other planetary science missions, Nelson said.
Back to the drawing board
Vicky Hamilton, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, expressed disappointment that eight months after the independent review board released its report, the agency still lacks a solid plan for “a very valuable science goal.”
Returning these samples would also demonstrate capability for two-way trip to Mars before we can send astronauts, says Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. “The sample return technology is here, it exists,” she says. “It’s a matter of putting the pieces together.”
But scientists were relieved by one announcement: Fox said the revised timeline for sample return will not affect the science goals for Perseverance, including plans for it to explore terrain beyond Jezero Crater.
NASA’s Mars rover makes ‘fantastic’ find in search for past life
Among samples collected outside the crater will be “some of the ancient crust of Mars, representing rocks older than we have seen yet in Jezero Crater, some of which may have been altered by near-surface water,” says Meenakshi Wadhwa, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe and principal scientist for the Mars Sample Return program.
So far, the only Mars samples that scientists have been able to study on Earth are bits and pieces ejected from the red planet that made it to Earth as meteorites. All known Martian meteorites are “igneous” rocks, meaning that they solidified from lava, and all are very old. As a result, they provide valuable timestamps for Mars’ geological evolution, but carry little information about how the planet’s surface was shaped by the water that once flowed across it.
To achieve the mission’s main goal of searching for signs of past life, the real treasures are layered sedimentary rocks formed by minerals and organic matter deposited over the aeons by water. Perseverance’s instruments have already detected organic molecules in Martian samples, but whether those molecules are a marker of past life can only be determined by closer scrutiny in laboratories on Earth.
Platform reviewed: PS5 Available on: Xbox Series X|S, PC, PS5 Release date: January 25, 2023; March 19, 2024 (PS5)
Hi-Fi Rush, a rhythm action game that was originally released for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC back in January 2023, has finally landed on PlayStation 5 and it’s been worth the wait. With engaging combat mechanics and absolutely beautiful cartoon-like visuals, it’s an absolute blast to play even if a couple of areas in the middle of the game suffer from some repetitive enemy encounters.
Complete with all the post-launch updates from the Xbox and PC versions, which introduced free new cosmetics and modes, not to mention clever use of PS5 exclusive hardware features like enhanced haptic feedback and the speaker of the DualSense Wireless Controller, this PS5 release is the absolute best version of the game yet. As a result, this new release not only nets a glowing recommendation if you haven’t experienced Hi-Fi Rush before, but could also be worth a second look if you haven’t played since launch and want to discover what’s new.
Encore
(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
At the core of Hi-Fi Rush is its brilliant combat system, which seamlessly blends fast-paced third-person melee action with the careful timing of rhythm games like Hatsune Miku: Project Diva or Guitar Hero. After getting an MP3 player stuck inside his chest, everything around aspiring rock star protagonist Chai is synced perfectly in time with the background music. This includes his own animations like his constant finger clicking and a walk cycle that sees his feet hit the floor just in time with the beat, but also the attack animations of the robotic legions that you face.
You battle through each encounter with a fairly standard mix of light attacks, heavy attacks, parries, and dodges, but everything is elevated by one key detail. Attacks deal significantly more damage and flow seamlessly into powerful combos if you tap the button to trigger them just in time with the rhythm. It takes a little bit of getting used to at first, but almost nothing compares to the feeling of satisfaction when you finally manage to get into the flow and find yourself beating robots senseless perfectly in time to the song.
Best bit
(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
One incredible boss fight towards the end of the game sees you face off against a giant robotic wolf while an electronic rock cover of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony blares. It’s an almost transcendental experience and the very first thing that I wanted to replay once I had finished the game.
Mechanics are introduced slowly over the first few stages in an easily digestible format but even if you’re not very experienced when it comes to rhythm games, several well-considered features make it easy to learn the ropes. Most obviously, there’s a large on-screen guide that displays all the upcoming beats and can toggled on or off at any moment with the quick tap of a button. Aside from slightly reduced visibility thanks to its presence on the screen, there’s absolutely no penalty for using this whenever you need it. As each of the 12 stages features a new background song, I found that turning it on for the first few minutes of each one made it much easier to learn the beat.
Chai is also soon joined by a cat-like drone controlled by his companion, Peppermint, which steadily pulses with blue waves at the exact moment you should be hitting your button inputs. There’s also the matter of the background scenery, which also interacts with the music. Set in the sprawling production areas of the futuristic robotics company Vandelay, you’re almost always going to have some steam vent, production line, or flashing moving in time with the beat in view. This is not only a practical addition, but just an incredibly impressive visual effect that perfectly complements the stunningly smooth Saturday morning cartoon art style.
Feel the rhythm
(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
In addition to the combat arenas, stages are punctuated by a varied selection of mechanics. There are traversal puzzles which involve jumping between rhythmically moving platforms, sections where you speed along railing dodging incoming hazards, and even a few moments where the camera is pulled to a side-on view for some 2D platforming. If this wasn’t enough, stages boast their own unique aesthetics to help keep things fresh, ranging from shiny high-tech office buildings to underground volcanic construction sites.
Even in the face of all of this, however, a few stages do start to drag. There’s a great degree of variety in the melee and ranged enemies, but an overreliance on basic sword-wielding grunts in the mid-point of the roughly 12-hour campaign leads to a couple of very samey encounters. It doesn’t massively detract from the overall experience, but it holds Hi-Fi Rush back from perfection.
There’s also the matter of the story, which is conveyed through a seamless blend of lavish hand-drawn animation and subliminally smooth in-game cutscenes. I personally found the frequent fourth wall breaking, self-referential exchanges between Chai and the supporting cast quite charming and often very amusing, but it definitely won’t be for everyone. It’s not nearly as cringeworthy as dialogue from the likes of Borderlands 3 or Saints Row, but it’s in a similar vein.
(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
If that’s up your street then there’s plenty to love here and a fair amount of content to keep you playing after the credits have rolled. On top of a range of collectibles, special challenge rooms hidden across the campaign become unlocked on a second playthrough which, once completed, opens up a special area with even more to tackle. There are also additions like the endless arcade challenge mode, which were added to the Xbox and PC versions after launch but are available here right out of the gate.
Some PS5 exclusive features have been implemented with this release, which are fantastic inclusions too. On top of liberal use of the DualSense’s integrated speaker, which accentuates certain actions with punchy sound effects, haptic feedback has been employed to fantastic effect. With detailed vibration for everything from footsteps in cutscenes to song beats in boss battles, it’s a noticeable step up from playing with an Xbox Wireless Controller.
Hi-Fi Rush may have been a late arrival to the PS5 library, but it’s a brilliant experience that is still worth playing more than a year after its original release. With all of the post-launch content of the other versions, plus some PS5 exclusive additions, there’s never been a better time to get down to the beat.
Accessibility
In addition to its four difficulty settings (easy, normal, hard, and very hard) which can be changed at any point in the game, Hi-Fi Rush features a range of accessibility options. There are multiple subtitle settings for in-game dialogue and cutscenes that can change the text size, background colors, and transparency. There are also colorblind modes for deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia, and options to enable combat assisting features such as automatic parries, and a mode that automatically chooses your attack type.
Should I play Hi-Fi Rush?
(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
Play it if…
Don’t play it if…
How we tested Hi-Fi Rush
I completed Hi-Fi Rush on PS5 in just over twelve hours and then spent some extra time exploring a good amount of the extra content. On PS5, I played using a DualSense Wireless Controller and an Astro A50 X headset, the latter of which provided an absolutely brilliant audio experience. In addition to this, I played through some early sections on Xbox Series S using an Xbox Wireless Controller in order to directly compare the two versions.
The PDP Riffmaster looks to shake up a peripheral market that’s long been dormant. In fact, we haven’t really seen a dedicated guitar controller in nearly the decade since Rock Band 4’s release and its pack-in peripheral. In the years since this, finding a guitar controller for use with Harmonix’s rhythm game or similar titles has proven to be an expensive and frankly exhausting endeavor searching the second-hand market.
The Riffmaster puts an end to that. Manufacturer PDP has made a relatively affordable guitar controller that, at launch, is compatible with both Rock Band 4 and Fortnite Festival. This makes the Riffmaster the only official peripheral in town if you’ve been wanting to play the Fortniteside game with something more fitting than a traditional gamepad.
What’s more, PDP almost nails its first attempt with this controller. If you’ve got a hankering for some Rock Band 4, then it’ll be one of the best Xbox controllers for you. The Riffmaster is responsive, features all the buttons you’d expect in order to play these games comfortably (and more, as you will see), and has some smart design choices that boost its convenience factor. Sadly, the build quality here falls behind even what we expected during those halcyon Rock Band/Guitar Hero days, thus making its $129.99 (around £119.99) price tag a little tough to stomach. The Riffmaster is due to release sometime in April, but pre-orders are available now.
Design and features
(Image credit: Future)
The PDP Riffmaster comes in two configurations: one for PlayStation (PS5 and PS4), and one for Xbox (Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One) consoles, so make sure that you’re purchasing the right model for your platform before jumping in. Both are identical in design aside from some brand-relevant buttons and, thankfully, both models also work on PC.
The guitar itself has a collapsible fretboard, deviating from the detachable models of old. This is a smart design change, making it considerably easier to store and offering great portability. Packed in the box with the guitar controller, you get a USB dongle for wireless connectivity, a USB-C charging cable (also usable for wired play), and crucially, an adjustable strap for the peripheral itself.
The strap is of good quality and rests on the shoulder comfortably. It’s blissfully simple to adjust its length to suit your preferences, too. However, the Riffmaster itself falls short in the build quality department. The chassis or body is made of lightweight plastic, giving it a somewhat flimsy feel. The glossy finish also makes the device a fingerprint magnet. In fairness, its overall lightness is something of a boon for longer sessions and it’s never taxing on the shoulders while standing.
In terms of the Riffmaster’s controls, there’s a handy analog stick on the top rear of the neck, as well as a d-pad, Home, and sharing buttons on the guitar’s pickguard. Furthermore, the buttons on the fretboard (which are used to play notes in-game) can also be used for menu navigation. Overall, the buttons do feel of decent quality too which goes some way to offset the disappointing body.
Rounding out the feature set is the whammy bar which is responsive in-game, but does feel slightly loose. It’s also a little too close to the strum bar and often ends up getting in the way during play. The strum bar is easily the weakest aspect of the product, sadly. It’s missing the clickiness of older Guitar Hero and Rock Band peripherals. This does mean it’s much quieter, but it feels rather loose and mushy when pressed.
One last thing I’m not especially impressed by is the Riffmaster’s aesthetic. While it certainly looks the part as a guitar, the plain all-black look is a little bland. Some optional faceplates or pickguards wouldn’t go amiss in future if PDP wants to support the peripheral in the long term.
Performance and battery life
(Image credit: Future)
On the whole, the PDP Riffmaster performs brilliantly. The device’s responsiveness is pin-sharp, even when used wirelessly. You can rest assured that no matter your difficulty selection or the intensity of any given song, the Riffmaster won’t let you down.
I also love the addition of five optional buttons at the bottom end of the fretboard, near the body. You don’t need to use these, but they’re there if you fancy a bit of showboating when playing through a nail-biting guitar solo. This is a really nice touch that I feel lends the Riffmaster some much-needed character.
Another area where the Riffmaster excels is in its battery life. You’ll get around 36 hours on a full charge, which is pretty exceptional and puts it in the same ballpark as the Xbox Wireless Controller. It charges pretty swiftly too; it takes just a handful of hours to charge back up to full.
The only real sticking point for this controller that is a potential deal breaker is the aforementioned unsatisfying strum bar. It does function perfectly well, but the lack of mechanical register means you may miss the odd note during particularly fast-paced shreds as it’s in instances like this that it’s not always easy to discern whether the Riffmaster has registered your input or not. This lack of feedback, as a result, may make it harder for you to get a full 100% combo on more challenging tracks.
Should I buy the PDP Riffmaster?
(Image credit: Future)
PDP’s first attempt at a bespoke, wireless guitar controller for Rock Band 4 and similar games is certainly an admirable one. While the manufacturer has nailed responsiveness and included impressive features like a foldable design and superb battery life, its bland aesthetic and listless strum bar means there’s plenty of room for improvement.
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
How we tested the PDP Riffmaster
PDP provided TechRadar Gaming with the Xbox version of the Riffmaster for testing. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been using it to play with Rock Band 4 and its hundreds of songs. I endeavored to test songs of all difficulties, genres, and intensities to get a feel for the controller, its responsiveness, and ease of use during long sessions.
