Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ laid-back gameplay has taken the world by storm and shows no sign of slowing down. There’s never been a better time to stay inside and enjoy the leisurely island lifestyle — and people are loving what the title has to offer. But once you’ve burned through your first 40 hours, New Horizons is best played in short bursts. Most people will log in for a few minutes each day, see what’s happening on the island, finish their daily tasks, and quickly log out. While mods can add more variety, sometimes you need a fresh take to really scratch that itch. None of the following suggestions are identical to New Horizons, but they all offer a unique combination of crafting, exploring, and chatting with your NPC neighbors that New Horizons fans are bound to enjoy.
Not only is My Time at Sandrock an excellent life simulator, but its graphics are just as cute as those of New Horizons. Players will travel to a cozy postapocalyptic land where nearly all modern technology has been lost or destroyed. Only you, the new Builder, can use your tools to not only bring your own farm back to life, but the entire town. There’s a great mix of collecting materials, building and upgrading, building relationships with the townspeople, and even some combat.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.