XDefiant is a free-to-play shooter from Ubisoft, which brings together multiple factions from the publisher’s long list of franchises. Each of these factions have their own abilities and passives that make them suited for certain playstyles, so knowing which one works best for you should be an important part of your strategy. While individual characters within these factions share the same abilities, unlocking them all gives you access to more customization options via unique skins.
If you’d like to unlock every character in the game, you’ll need to complete challenges that typically ask you to use one of their faction’s two abilities on your foes or allies. These can take quite a while to finish, so an alternative method is to purchase a skin for that character in the shop, which will automatically unlock them for you to use. However, this costs real money, so we only recommend doing it if you already know you want the skin, too.
Here’s how to unlock every character in XDefiant.
The Cleaners are a group of antagonists from The Division franchise. They specialize in all things fire, giving them access to incendiary rounds, Molotov cocktails, incinerator drones, and even a massive flamethrower.
The Phantoms are a shadowy group from the Ghost Recon franchise. They specialize in defense by using deployed barriers and arming themselves with shields, and they even have slightly increased health to make them hardier.
Libertad is a rebel group from Far Cry 6. They specialize in healing in a variety of ways, including being able to occasionally increase the health pool of nearby enemies in a pinch.
Echelon is a special operations unit from the Splinter Cell franchise. They specialize in sticking to the shadows with invisibility, showing the locations of enemies, and even using Sam Fisher’s iconic pistol to decimate foes in just a few shots.
DedSec is a hacking collective from the Watch Dogs franchise. They specialize in disrupting enemy players with face-hugging Spiderbots, hijacking their abilities, and shutting down their minimap.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.