During Sony’s May 2024 State of Play presentation, Sony revealed a new Astro Bot game — simply titled Astro Bot. It’s the third game in the platformer series, and it’s due out for PlayStation 5 on September 6.
The game’s reveal trailer shows our hero Astro waking up in a desert by a fox-shaped robot. He then flies off on a ship shaped like a DualSense controller. The trailer shows Astro visiting several diverse biomes, including arctic areas, beaches, and even high up in the clouds. Several PlayStation cameos are in the trailer as well, including Parappa the Rappa, Kratos from God of War Ragnarok, and Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West.
There are six galaxies to explore and over 80 levels for Astro to search for his scattered crew in. Astro has access to over 15 new abilities that offer unique playstyles. One of them is shown off in the trailer, called Barkster, which Astro wears like a backpack. Barkster lets Astro air-dash and smash through enemies, metal, and glass. The game will also make use of the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.
The first game in the series, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, was released in 2018 for PS4 and PS VR. The second entry, called Astro’s Playroom, was released in 2020 and comes pre-installed with every PS5 console.
The series is developed by Team Asobi, which is based in Japan. Back in 2022, the studio revealed that its next project would be a full-blown commercial title and its “biggest to date.” It’s unclear whether Team Asobi was referring to the new Astro Bot game, but this one certainly looks much bigger in scope than the previous two entries.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.