The Dead by Daylight and Castlevania crossover launches today, not only bringing a new killer and survivor to the former, but also some new abilities, including shape-shifting for the first time.
Undoubtedly, the flashiest of the additions is the new killer, The Dark Lord (you know, Dracula). And like the lord of darkness himself, he can shape-shift into three forms. First is the normal vampire form, which can throw flames and float around obstacles. The second is the wolf, which has improved survivor tracking abilities that let it see clues like scratch marks or follow scent orbs. The wolf can also collect these orbs to move faster. Finally, there’s the bat, which doesn’t have a terror radius, can teleport to nearby vault locations, and has the keenest perception out of all three, with scratch marks constantly being visible and footsteps being louder (although you can’t see the survivors).
Switching between all three forms will take strategy and some experience in Dead by Daylight to use effectively, but it’s a great way to change up the relatively normal batch of killers.
Then there’s the new survivor, Trevor Belmont, who will be bringing along three new perks. Eyes of Belmont reveals the killer’s aura for a longer period of time after completing a generator and will likely be a new favorite among survivors. The other two are more specific, with Exultation allowing you to upgrade a held item if you pallet stun a killer, and Moment of Glory givingthe player a “broken” status effect when injured. After a certain amount of time, they’ll heal one health state.
As with many previous collaborations, both the killer and survivor get new skins. Trevor gets a bunch, including ones for Leon and Simon Belmont, while Dracula can dress himself up as versions of himself from Dracula X and Castlevania Chronicles. Strangely enough, there’s also a skin that makes him look like Alucard from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and comes with “an entirely new experience,” according to the developers.
If you can wait until September 12, Dead by Daylight will also be getting a Maria Renard outfit for Kate Denson and a Sypha Belnades outfit for Mikaela Reid.
If you’re a Castlevania fan who doesn’t care about Dead by Daylight, there’s a little extra news. Three Nintendo DS Castlevania titles will be releasing on the Switch in the Castlevania Dominus Collection, announced during Nintendo’s August Partner Showcase on Tuesday. The bundle includes Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia, along with the arcade title Haunted Castle.
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.