Arkane Studios, the Microsoft-owned developer behind games like Deathloop and Redfall, announced Blade at The Game Awards 2023.
Blade features the Marvel hero of the same name. In the reveal trailer, we see a nervous barber struggling with a trembling razer, a flash of Blade’s fangs as he puts on his sunglasses, and the ominous message that he’s “just getting started.” Not much is known about the actual plot or how the gameplay will be structured in the final product.
Marvel Games’ Bill Rosemann and Arkane’s Dinga Bakaba joined show host Geoff Keighley on stage after the reveal, explaining that the collaboration happened organically from a mutual admiration of each other’s work and a desire to bring to life an action game about Blade in time for the character’s 50th anniversary.
“The secret superpower of Marvel Games’ is our constant focus on bringing together world-class talent with the fan-favorite characters that they love,” said Rosemann.
Although the specifics of the game weren’t known ahead of time, an Arkane Studios reveal at The Game Awards 2023 was rumored for several days ahead of the announcement. Leaker NateTheHate was the first to tease that the Dishonored developer might show off a game during the event. That rumor gained more steam in the following days by other leakers and the fact that Xbox employees and Bakaba were spotted at a hotel near the event venue. That’s not even mentioning the fact that Blade appeared on leaked Microsoft documents from earlier this year.
This first official look at the game is certainly intriguing and hopefully gives the studio a way to continue to redeem itself following the launch of Redfall, which was in poor shape upon its release, but improved with post-launch patches.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.