Read our full Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel review.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is set to arrive in North America on October 14, 2014 and “internationally” (probably not including Antarctica) on October 17, 2K Games confirms. We celebrate this joyous revelation with a techno-laden trailer featuring a dance number that’s informed by input from Harmonix, apparently. Why? Because Gearbox Software comes up with oddball ideas, like Harmonix dance numbers and frown failures and dance kittens.
Fine. Dance kittens are perfect.
Here’s that trailer, but be sure to read past it if you want to know about how to get free bonus stuff for your game.
Free bonus stuff? Pre-orders! Put down some money early and you’ll get a code to download the Shock Drop Slaughter Pit, an airless death arena that you get to fill with the blood of your enemies. For you Borderlands 2 aficionados out there, it’s probably similar to the Creature Slaughter Dome DLC, only with the added constant threat of suffering a terrible, oxygen-deprived death. You know, for fun.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel follows four new playable characters into outer space. Set before the events of Borderlands 2, you shoot things and loot guns (to shoot bigger things with) as Athena, Wilhelm, Nisha, and Claptrap — all of whom have appeared to some degree as NPCs over the course of the series — while in the employ of the future-villain-to-be-known-as-Handsome Jack. All of this happens on or near Pandora’s lone moon, Elpis.
Read more about it in our first look preview. There are laser guns and ice bullets and low-gravity-assisted butt stomps. You’ll be able to get back to the Borderlands come October 14 when The Pre-Sequel comes to PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.