BioWare’s most celebrated role-playing games from the late 1990s and early 2000s are headed to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch later this year. Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment are all slated for a North American release on September 24. Just in time for Christmas, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition will hit stores on December 3.
BioWare plans to release both physical and digital copies of the beloved games, though a spokesperson for publisher Skybound Games said the physical version won’t come with the in-depth manuals or lovingly crafted world maps that were standard with RPGs of that era. The new editions were developed by Beamdog, which worked on PC rereleases of the RPGs.
Since most of these games were optimized for a mouse-and-keyboard input, the new console editions will have controller optimization and high-resolution graphics support that will help them look better on your widescreen TV. There are also some multiplayer options, along with additional content and character classes.
The six games are classics among BioWare fans and are a must-play for any diehard RPG fan.
Baldur’s Gate in particular helped establish the studio as an RPG powerhouse when it was released for PC in 1998. The original version sold 2.2 million copies between its release and 2003 and introduced many PC gamers to the world of Dungeons & Dragons.
We don’t yet know what the pricing will be for the console releases, but Beamdog’s Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition retails for $19.99 on Steam.
The games hark back to a time when BioWare’s slate of releases found near-universal praise with critics and audiences. Each game still has a high ranking on MetaCritic, unlike a number of the company’s latest releases such as Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Anthem’s rocky launch was attributed to a number of factors, including a crunch culture that subjected developers to miserable work conditions, according to reports. The company rolled out a 90-day road map for improving the game in February, but delayed some features in April , stating that it has “a long way to go before Anthem becomes the game we all want it to be.”
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.