With game releases slowing down until later this winter, now is the perfect time to jump back into Battlefield V. Electronic Arts and DICE have been releasing new content for free, and in the latest drop, they will release a new Squad Conquest mode, as well as a handful of weapons.
Part of the Tides of War ongoing update system in Battlefield V, the second chapter is Lightning Strikes. Its biggest addition is Squad Conquest, which condenses the game’s flagship mode into an eight-versus-eight battle to control three flags on the Arras, Rotterdam, and Hamada maps. The mode will only make use of a small portion of the maps in order to keep the battles tight and engaging, and Rotterdam is the smallest of the three. It only features a single armored vehicle, and that will only be rewarded to a team that already controls all the flags.
Squad Conquest will only be available from January 17-30, but you’ll also be able to earn several new weapons through January and February. These include the ZK-383 submachine gun, the Modele 1944 sidearm, and the M1922 machine gun.
Changes have also been made to the “death experience” in an attempt to give players more information on how they bit the dust. The name of the player who killed you will now be displayed where you died, and a new camera will follow the killer afterward. The directional damage indicator has also been tweaked to better point you in the direction of incoming fire.
The previous Tides of War update concluded the Battlefield V campaign with the German-focused Last Tiger mission, which happened to be one of the best in the whole game. It also included access to the Panzerstorm map and largely starred armored vehicles instead of infantry.
Battlefield V‘s largest addition, however, is yet to come. The free mode “Firestorm” will be the game’s take on battle royale later this year, making use of vehicles and environmental destruction to create a different experience than competitor Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is offering. Whether or not that will be enough to draw players back to DICE’s shooter, however, remains to be seen.
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.