Word on the street is Arkham Knight for PC has some serious bugs. So serious in fact, that sales are on hold until Warner and Rocksteady get their act together and fix the major performance issues. Now, Kotaku Australia got its hands on a copy of an internal EB Games email that says Arkham Knight won’t be fixed until “spring,” (referring to the Australian spring, which coincides with autumn in America). Of course, that could be as soon as September, or as late as November.
Sales of the PC version of the newest game in the Batman franchise were suspended on June 25, two days after release, when reports of audio and graphics issues flooded Steam and other forums. Stores returned hard copies, and even Steam downloads are shut down. Rocksteady knows what’s wrong and is working with AMD and NVIDIA to fill the graphical holes. Until they do, though, anyone who wants a copy of Batman Arkham Knight for PC is going to have to hunt for it (think small non-chain electronics stores in bad neighborhoods), since the big retailers are playing ball by sending back the hard copies and Steam downloads aren’t available.
Shipping the hard copies back and forth seems an inherent waste considering nothing about the discs themselves will actually change. The game will most likely be fixed via a downloadable patch, so except for the obvious risk of the rough, low-FPS graphics Arkham version continuing to leak out into the gaming populace, it would have made more sense to save the gas and the trouble.
Those who grabbed Batman Arkham Knight for PC right away can choose between being annoyed that they’re stuck with a game that is so marginally functional, or being annoyed that Warner Bros. won’t just release the DLC. The logic is that those who want to suffer through the problems will do so, and those who can’t take the rough textures will wait for the patches. According to this gamer, the textures are a bit cringe-worthy, and yes the audio has some issues, but there is a work-around for the 30-frames-per-second cap, and the game is playable in a general sense, though with none of the polish typical of the earlier games.
A lot of people are probably appreciating their consoles a little more now.
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.