PlayStation opened its September State of Play presentation with a little surprise for Astro Bot fans. Developer Team Asobi announced that it will be adding 10 new bots to the game for free later this fall.
Astro Bot is filled with bots of popular PlayStation characters and iconography, so the new bots will certainly follow that same trend. We don’t know the full list (studio head Nicolas Doucet said there will be more information soon), but the trailer introduced Eve from Stellar Blade and a helldiver from Helldivers 2.
The two like to dance together, and if you look closely behind them, you can see some bots out of focus. Some eagle-eyed players can probably figure out who else is in the pack. You can watch the trailer below.
The DLC will also introduce five new speedrun levels. “Many of you asked for the return of speedrun levels so we hope you enjoy those. Time to sharpen those jumping skills and shave milli-seconds at every turn!” Doucet said in a PlayStation blog post following the announcement.
Since each level in Astro Bot has levels with tons of secrets, including robots that need rescuing, the new bots might potentially be added in some new levels, although it’s unclear how the characters will be included. We would love it if they added Final Fantasy characters. The game already includes characters from God of War, Death Stranding, the Horizon series, the Uncharted series, and many, many others. You really have to know all your PlayStation history to recognize them all.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.