The latest update for Buy Now is here and it’s one worthy of excitement. The “Australian Summer Update” addresses the biggest concern of the otherwise stellar experience: official mod support. Players could mod Civilization VI before this update, but the process was rather cumbersome.
Now, there are a number of tools available directly in the game, including ModBuddy (packaging, development tool), an arts/assets tool, and FireTuner, an editing and debugging tool. Better yet, players can share and upload their mods on Steam Workshop, which will certainly bring Civilization VI mods to a much larger audience.
While official mod support may be the most notable aspect of the update, there’s two more major additions to Civilization VI.
For the first time in franchise history, Australia comes into the fray. The leader of Australia is Prime Minister John Curtin, who served his country during World War II when Australia was under constant fear of Japanese attacks.
According to an official blog post, “Australia is a civ that gets bonus housing for coastal cities, bonuses for building Districts on attractive terrain, and additional production if targeted for war. Australia’s unique unit is the Digger (which replaces Infantry), and their unique improvement is the Outback Station.”
Australia’s inclusion also brings a new scenario. The “Outback Tycoon” tasks players to explore the terrain for natural resources. It’s a non-combat scenario that asks players to expand their territories by acquiring gold. You can read more about Australia in Civilization VI here.
The last prominent addition to Buy Now with this update is multiplayer teams. The multiplayer mode feeds off of the Alliance system, and dispenses bonuses and benefits based on the actions you and your teammates make.
As usual, the update also contains balance and AI tweaks, and bug fixes. Since this is a larger update, you may have to clear some space on your hard drive. Although the download size is just 7GB, the update balloons to 27GB once installed.
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.